Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (10 page)

“And the last verse or so goes,
‘I was sick with dread, but I bravely said, I'll just take a peep inside. I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked, then the door I opened wide. And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar, and he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said, ‘Please close that door. It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm. Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm.’
”

“Haw, haw,” said Sorry, opening the door of the Blazer and stepping out onto the gravel. He looked around, then sauntered over to a tree and unzipped his fly. He held his cigarette in his lips as he urinated.

Hunter shook his head and walked closer to the lake, taking a deep breath as he surveyed the wide expanse of water, backed by rocky lumps of low hills. Limpid waves licked at the pebbly shore, and a breeze off the lake tickled his forehead with a lock of his hair. Although the sky was clear, it was still cool enough that he was glad he’d kept his jacket on.

Sorry walked over to join him, tossing his cigarette butt on the rocky beach, where its smoke continued to spiral upwards. “What’s our next stop, boss?”

“You’re tired of this view already?”

Sorry shrugged. “It’s a big fuckin’ lake. We drove past dozens of them the last couple of days. How long do we have to look at this one?”

Hunter sighed. “Let’s go then.” As Sorry walked back to the truck, Hunter picked up the now dead cigarette butt and threw it in a bear-proof trash container. He thought again how he missed his solitude.

“We’ve got another seven hours or so of driving ahead of us,” he told Sorry as the Blazer wound its way back toward the highway, tires crunching on gravel. “Like I said earlier, I figure we can take a coffee break in about half an hour at Braeburn Lodge, maybe pick up a burger or something in Carmacks and grab something to snack on until we reach Dawson. There might not be anywhere else to get a meal until we get there.” He glanced sideways at his passenger. “I assume that your main interest is in where do we eat next.”

“You know me well, man. I’m hungry already.”

They drove in silence for several minutes. Hunter looked over at Sorry a few times, seeing the look on his face change from worried to sullen to worried again.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.” The big biker sniffed, his jaw working. Then, “Yes. Maybe.” He rubbed some dust off the dash with his fingers. “One minute I’m sure she’s missing me, and two minutes later I picture her sucking face with some guy in the neighborhood who’s just been waiting for us to split, you know?” He slammed his fist against the dash. “It’s driving me fuckin’ crazy, thinking about it.”

“You know this guy?”

“Not a real guy, you idiot. I mean, some guy maybe she talks to sometimes when she’s picking the kids up at the school or picking out kumquats at Safeway or whatever.”

“An imaginary guy, then.”

“Well, no. A real guy. Just not one particular guy, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I know your wife well enough to know that she doesn’t take relationships lightly. I expect you know that yourself. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t take up with another man unless it was permanently over between you.”

“Maybe she thinks it is.” Now he was hitting the palm of one hand with the fist of the other, like a boxer warming up for a fight.

“If it was your idea to leave, she might. Do
you
think it is? Do you want it to be?”

“No. Of course not. You think I’m an idiot? We’re a family. I love those kids, and I thought we loved each other until she kicked me out.” He exhaled loudly and pulled another cigarette out of his jacket pocket, then began searching his pockets for a lighter.

“Consol,” said Hunter.

Sorry lit his cigarette and took a deep drag, holding the smoke in his lungs until he’d rolled down the window halfway, then letting it out in a rush.

“I’d say Simone wanted you to decide just how important she and the kids are to you, and whether they’re worth giving up some of your selfish indulgences for.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Selfish indulgences.” He almost spat out the last two words. “That’s a load of crap.”

“Think about it. Since I’ve known you, you’ve quit every job you’ve ever had because you got pissed off at your boss, or else you lost your temper and did something impulsive that got you fired. Like the time you were working as a bouncer at the King George and threw some poor customer through the stained glass window.”

“He started it.”

“You can’t tell me you didn’t know what you were about to do was wrong and would get you fired.”

Sorry stared out the window and took another drag on his cigarette.

“That’s an indulgence, chief. You indulge yourself in destructive behavior because you feel like it at the time, without regard for your family’s well-being.”

Sorry snorted in Hunter’s direction, threw his cigarette butt out on the road, and rolled up the window. “Wake me when it’s time for coffee,” he said, then crossed his arms across his belly, snugged his chin into his chest and closed his eyes.

They did what most tourists in Dawson City do. They arrived just after four o’clock and after an early dinner (which Hunter somehow knew wasn’t going to be their last meal of the day), they visited the cabins of Robert W. Service and Jack London on Eighth Street – although Sorry claimed never to have heard of either writer except for what Hunter had told him during the drive – and did quick tours of the Dawson City Museum and the S.S. Keno paddle wheeler down by the water.

In their quest for a hotel room, they walked the unpaved streets of town and ended up at the Sourdough Saloon. Even Sorry passed on the famous Sour Toe cocktail, opting instead for a draft beer while Hunter ordered his usual Labatt’s Blue. And of course, they had something to eat. They managed to get tickets for the second show at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s, and came out of the theatre twenty minutes before midnight and marveled that the sun had still not set.

“What now?” Sorry stretched, his biceps bulging then relaxing as he brought his hands over his head, then straightened his arms in front of him. A grey-haired woman walking past raised her eyebrows at the sight of the cobra tattoo on the big biker’s forearm.

Hunter was wearing a blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up. They had left their jackets in the borrowed Chevy but the temperature had fallen by a good fifteen degrees since then, so Hunter rolled down his sleeves and suggested they head back to the SUV.

“Where else we gonna go?” Sorry pulled his cigarette pack out from where he’d stashed it in sleeve of his tee shirt. “We struck out on finding a hotel room. Unless you want to try sleeping on the beach or under a fuckin’ tree.”

The combination of daylight and Sorry’s loud snoring made it impossible for Hunter to sleep in the close confines of the Blazer. The back seats folded down so the two of them lay side-by-side in the back of the vehicle, each wrapped in a twin-sized blanket, the only bedding they had, and using their duffle bags for pillows. Sorry couldn’t stretch out his full six-foot-something length, so parts of him – one arm and two legs to be exact – were encroaching on Hunter’s side of the make-do bed.

At about 1:30, Hunter crawled out of the back of the SUV, trying not to wake his friend. The big man snorted and stirred, but quickly resumed his loud snoring. Hunter had parked in a little alcove of trees across the road not far from the ferry dock, so he walked up and over the dike to the beach, then along the beach until he found a log that had been deposited by high water. He sat on the rocky shore with his back snugged against the log and wrapped his blanket around his shoulders. In spite of the hour, the river, ferry and opposite shore were easily visible in the northern twilight.

The ferry ran through the night, if you could call it that at this season of continuous daylight, taking cars and trucks across the Yukon River to West Dawson. There was a small intrepid community in West Dawson, he knew – although to his way of thinking, all the year-round residents this far north were intrepid –who lived off the grid in semi-isolation. Once the car ferry shut down for the winter, they had to risk taking a small boat across the half-frozen river or wait until the river ice was solid enough to support themselves or their vehicles before they could come into town for supplies. The ferry was part of the highway system that linked the northern terminus of the Klondike Highway to the Top of the World highway, which led to the Yukon-Alaska border crossing.

Hunter watched the ferry leave its gravel dock across the river, drift briefly downstream, then power up to fight against the current in order to reach the Dawson side. There were three cars and two motor homes on the ferry; two pickups with campers and several motorcycles waited on the near side to load. The motorcycles made him think of Dan Sorenson, sleeping like an innocent in the borrowed Blazer. He could tell that Sorry wasn’t going to want to spend another day in Dawson. He was a restless soul who would no doubt find some trouble to get into, like a hyperactive child, if he was bored for very long.

Ken had been a lot like that. His enthusiasm for life had energized Hunter, who liked to be productive himself, but happily spent time alone in quiet contemplation, especially outdoors. Ken liked to be around people; more, he needed to be around people, needed their feedback and approval. Whenever Hunter heard the Barbra Streisand song about ‘people who need people’, he had always thought of Ken, and envied him his outgoing nature. Yet in the end, Ken was the unlucky one. He had suffered from that need, suffered unbearably.

Hunter sighed. Last time he’d been to Dawson City, it had been with Ken. When they had served here in the Yukon, they had hailed the North as an almost magical place. They were proud to be here, be part of this community of audacious souls who put up with the long dark winters, the blood-thirsty mosquitoes, the lack of civilized amenities in order to have the freedom of living in a vast, sparsely populated territory where individualism and eccentricity were celebrated instead of frowned upon or ridiculed.

They had talked about staying here for life, or at the very least, retiring to the north when they eventually left the RCMP. Then Hunter had met Christine and moved back to B.C. to keep her happy, and Ken had followed him to Kamloops and married Helen, and their priorities had shifted to making homes for their families and advancing their careers, which was what good providers were supposed to do. Somewhere along the way, they had gotten confused about their priorities, somehow lost sight of the meaning of life, if they’d ever known what it was. Too much work, too much pressure, not enough peace, not enough joy. Hunter took a deep breath and let it out again, slowly.

“We should’ve come back here, Ken. We should’ve chucked it all and come back here when things started to go sour, at least long enough to get our heads straight again.”

Hunter watched the ferry leave again, watched the mighty Yukon River carry it downstream toward the landing on the opposite bank, then fixed his eyes on the surface of the river with its swells and whorls and riffles and furrows, signs of the enormous force of the current beneath its liquid skin. In spite of its terrible power, watching the river somehow gave him a sense of peace. He slouched lower so his head rested against the log, and eventually he dozed off.

“No body.”

“Ken?” Weird. Ken was wearing red serge – the RCMP dress uniform – but instead of the regulation Stetson, he had a muskrat fur hat with ear flaps, the kind he and Hunter used to wear in the Yukon winters. “What are you doing here?”

Hunter looked around and didn’t know where he was until he saw the dogs. He and Ken were back at Martin Blake’s cabin, standing side by side in deep snow, up to their knees. Hunter tried to move his legs but couldn’t. He might as well have been standing in cement.

Ken had a bottle of Everclear in one hand. He lifted it to his lips and took a long pull. Through the clear glass of the bottle, Hunter saw a severed toe, brown and wrinkled, tumbling through the overproof alcohol. Ken wiped his mouth with his red serge sleeve and grinned at Hunter.

“All that blood,” Ken continued, “two people missing from that bloody cabin and no bodies. Why didn’t we ever find either body, bro? We searched all around here that first week, then we searched again after the snow was gone in the spring. No body. No skull. No bones. No scraps of clothing. Nothing.”

“The grizzly. That’s why.”

“We never found the grizzly either, bro.” Ken turned and grinned at him again. Hunter felt immeasurably sad.

“Why have you come back? Have you got something to tell me?” Ken was dead, wasn’t he? If a dead man could come back, why would he come back to discuss an old case? Weren’t there more important things to talk about?

“We always get our man, remember? Don’t let me down, bro. Don’t let me down.”

Hunter felt something cold and hard against the back of his skull, felt the cold, uneven ground beneath his butt and legs. He opened his eyes and saw the shifting surface of the river, saw the sun gilding the tops of the trees on the other side. Feeling disoriented, he sat up straighter with an effort, his muscles stiff, feeling clumsy from the cold. The back of his head felt bruised from his hard wooden pillow.