Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (30 page)

Big Al said, “Damn, I’m glad you were free to start right away. We’ve had to use two or three delivery outfits since we lost our last driver. Besides the extra cost, you can’t just get on the blower and talk to a driver to find out when he’ll get there, or divert him to pick up a hot shipment that’s just landed at the airport or whatever.” They were standing at the back of a loaded truck and Big Al was gesturing at the cartons and crates stacked inside its box. Today’s load contained everything from small tools and parts to bathtubs, shower stalls and furnaces.

“Everything including the kitchen sink,” the boss joked.

Sorry rewarded Al’s stupid joke with a genuine laugh, at least he hoped it sounded genuine, and assured him that he knew the city well and was good with paperwork. He’d have no trouble keeping track of what to deliver where and when, and returning all of the signed receipts at the end of the day.

Big Al handed him a cell phone in some kind of leather holster. “You’ll need this. Put your belt through this loop. Speed dial number one to reach me, not for personal calls and whatever you do, don’t leave it in your truck when you’re making a delivery, okay. And make sure you lock the doors – the cab and the roll up –anytime the truck’s outa your sight. Last guy wasn’t always careful with that.”

Sorry was on the verge of asking him what happened to the last guy when a speaker on the ceiling came to life. “Al. Call on line two. Al. Call on line two, please.”

Big Al slapped Sorry on the shoulder and said, “Gotta get that. Got any questions, just get on the blower.” As he walked away, he pointed at the cell phone in Sorry’s hand. “Only stupid question is the one you don’t ask. Better ask a dozen stupid questions than make one mistake. Got it?”

Sorry nodded and held up his right hand to signal that he got it, then lit a cigarette and started leafing through his paperwork and checking the orders against the load on the truck. A forklift ground to a halt behind him and a middle-aged man in coveralls swung out from behind the wheel. Sorry noticed the name on the coveralls was Tito.

“You’re the new guy, eh?” said Tito. “Better put that coffin nail out before the boss sees ya. He’s allergic, eh?” The man looked Sorry up and down as Sorry took a last deep drag, then shook his head. “Don’t expect you’ll be around long,” he added, stressing the ‘you’.

Sorry was half inclined to mash the cigarette out in Tito’s face, but that wouldn’t have been a very good start to their relationship so he ground it out on the warehouse floor, then picked up the butt and tucked it in his back pocket.

“Al must’ve forgot to mention that,” he said, then stuck out his big mitt. “Hey, Tito.” It was all he could do to keep from calling him Titty. “My name’s Dan Sorenson. Nice to meet you, and I appreciate the tip.”
If only Hunter could see me now,
he thought
.
“You the one who loaded my truck?”

“Yes. Usually me and the driver do it together, so I can load the stuff in the order you want, if you got a plan for your route, eh?” Tito squinted at Sorry, waiting for a reaction.

Sorry gave him what he wanted. “You did a good job on your own, man. I appreciate it. I had to fill out some paperwork for Al this morning, but tomorrow I’ll come right in here and we can do the load together.” Sorry worked real hard and dredged up a smile. “Take it easy on me, okay? I’m the new guy, and you know I’m gonna make some mistakes. I’m sure as the senior employee you’ll be patient until I learn the ropes.” Sorry could hardly believe what was coming out of his mouth.
I’m lying like a rug. Hunter was right. It sure comes easy and I think it’s gonna pay off.

He checked his wristwatch as he pulled out of the yard. His first stop was about twenty minutes away. As he accelerated down Highway 10 toward Cloverdale, he reached into the lunch bag Mo had packed and felt around. There was a sandwich and an apple, and his fingers identified a plastic-wrapped object that felt like cookies. Perfect. Just a little something to tide him over until lunch.

Goldie looked over at Yukon Sally’s pickup and saw Mark with his seat reclined and his head back. She knew he needed the sleep after driving through the night, so the three women bypassed the truck in silence and headed for a small green space across the lane from the clinic, adjacent to the Dawson City Museum in the Old Territorial Administration Building. Out of nowhere it seemed, Hootie appeared and trotted just ahead of them. “Are you up to walking, Gran?” asked Goldie. “There must be a bench around here somewhere.”

Betty nodded, but this time she let Goldie take her arm and Goldie felt her grandmother lean against her, ever so slightly. “The nurse said you should take it easy for a couple of days, so don’t push yourself.”

They found a bench in the sun, facing a little garden in the center of the lawn. Goldie motioned to her mother to sit, then sat down herself in the middle of the bench and waited for Betty to settle herself on her right.

“I’d like to –,” began April.

Goldie raised a hand to stop her and shook her head. “Wait. Before you speak, let me say what I need to say. Please.”

Two young boys on bicycles raced down the path that bisected the little park, one yelling over his shoulder to the other to hurry up. Goldie watched until they disappeared around the back of the big wooden building that housed the museum. She took a deep breath and blew it out again. Where to start?

“This is a very emotional day for me. I’ve been crazy worried about Gran – Betty,” she added for her mother’s benefit, “– and suddenly seeing my mother for the first time is kind of an overload.” She paused, her eyes closed and her lips pressed together. “I don’t want to hurt either one of you, but somehow I think that today, it has to be about me. It may not be intentional on your part – on either of your parts – but I feel like I’m in the middle of a tug-of-war. I’m not responsible for what happened twenty-four years ago, so it’s not fair to make me responsible for what’s happening today. Do you understand what I’m saying?” She looked first at Betty, and then at April.

Betty nodded, a solemn expression on her weathered face. April blinked her eyes and looked at the dirt between her feet, as if she’d been scolded.

Goldie kept her eyes on her mother as she said, “The way I see it, you made life very difficult for me. I’m a nobody. It’s lucky they let me go to school in Eagle, and it’s lucky my friend Tessa gave me her driver’s license to cross the border today, because I have no legal name and no legal country. And Gran, you did nothing to fix that. You just took me somewhere you knew it wouldn’t matter so much. I need that fixed. I need to have a legal identity so I can have a life, wherever I go.

“I’ve grown up not really knowing who I am. I always thought, because of the color of my hair and because Gran is part Gwich’in, that I was part Gwich’in myself. My native heritage has been a proud part of my identity, and since I found out about you,” she nodded at her mother, “that’s been taken away from me.

“It’s not that I’m angry about that – being angry won’t solve anything –but it’s made me feel kind of lost and I’m impatient to discover who I really am. Me. Alone. Myself, standing on my own two feet, going where I want and not where either of you think I should go. Or stay.”As she spoke, she scuffed her foot repeatedly on the ground in front of the bench, creating a small depression in the brown dirt.
Afoot and lighthearted, I take to the open road.

“Gran, I need to leave Eagle. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon.” She turned to her mother. “I will come visit you in Oregon, but I won’t stay.”
Healthy, free, the world before me.
“I want to go to college, get a job, see as much of the world as I can afford to see before I decide where to spend the rest of my life.”
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
“Do you understand?”

This time it was April who nodded. “I hope you do a better job of discovering yourself than I did, and I wish you luck. I hope you’re taking into account that this wasn’t an easy trip for me to make. I had to …”

Betty raised both her hands and motioned for April to wait. “Let me speak first,” she said. “I will not take part in any tug-of-war. I will miss you very much, but you will go with my blessing. I’m an old woman, and I don’t have much time left so ...”

“No! Don’t do that to me again!” Goldie sprang up from the bench and turned to face her grandmother. “Everybody gets old, everybody dies. It’s not my fault! And I can’t put my life on hold waiting for you to die.” She immediately regretted her outburst and went down on one knee before the old woman, taking one of her grandmother’s hands in both of hers. “I’m sorry, Gran. It’s not that I don’t care. I do care, and it hurts me. I hope you live to be a hundred and that my children are lucky enough to get to know you, but I’ll never get to have any children if you don’t let me go.”

Gran closed her eyes tight, her mouth twisted as if she were in pain. She nodded and patted Goldie’s hand.

April cleared her throat, and Goldie turned to look at her. “I would have called or written if I’d known how to reach you, either one of you. Look, I know my timing was bad. I’ve accomplished what I came for. I’ve met you –“ She smiled at Goldie. “– and I’m sure you’ll let me know how to reach you again. I only ask one thing, for now, and then I’ll go.”

Goldie stood and stepped back from the bench. She used her right hand to shield her eyes against the brightness of the sun. “Yes?”

“A promise that you’ll spend some time with me, that you will come to visit me in Oregon, or let me come to visit you, whether it’s here in the north or somewhere else.” She directed her gaze to the ground as she continued. “I can’t change the past. Maybe it was for the best that I left you behind with Betty. You seem to me to be a wonderful young woman, strong and kind and beautiful.” Her eyes were wet as she raised them to Goldie’s and smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you in any way.”

April stood up and stepped forward to hug her. Relieved that the tug-of-war she’d anticipated hadn’t materialized, Goldie hugged her back and whispered the same words back to her. “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t want to hurt you today.” She looked at Gran over April’s shoulder. “Either of you.”

“If you don’t want to hurt me, why are you letting me starve? I need something to eat, and a mug of strong tea, or I’m not getting up off this bench.” Gran made shooing motions with her hands. There was no sign of a smile on her face. “Go. Go for a walk, both of you. Find me something to eat. Let me be alone with my dog for awhile. We feel a need to warm our bones here in the sun and your sappy babble is more than we can stomach. Right, Hootie?” At his name, the dog stood and laid his head on the old woman’s lap, his tail wagging.

When Goldie hesitated, Gran spoke again, louder and more insistent. “I said go. Go away and don’t come back unless you plan to feed me.” She wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck and laid her cheek against the top of his head.

April smiled. “Same old Betty.” She nodded at Goldie and reached for her arm. As Goldie and her mother walked away, they heard the old woman speaking softly to her dog.

“I guess you saved my life again, didn’t you, boy? Thank you, old friend.”

Hunter decided he’d only stay one more day and promised himself that by the next afternoon, he’d fuel up the Freightliner and head back to B.C. where he had a greater chance of scoring a southbound load. He knew he should call El to see if she had found anything for him yet, but decided to put it off. He had persuaded Bart to let him look through the case files related to the bloody cabin. There had to be something there, something that hadn’t seemed important at the time, but now with the new information – or misinformation? – from April, he could review it from a fresh perspective.

Bart left for a meeting, and Hunter turned to the documents in front of him, determined to find something that would help him unravel the mystery of Martin Blake’s death. Seeing the original notes regarding the case hit him hard. Reading his own and Ken’s words from 1972 pulled him back in time and it was all he could do to concentrate on their meaning instead of losing himself in personal memories of those first heady years in the RCMP. Back then as young recruits they were motivated and stimulated and cared so deeply about what they were doing. It was a far cry from the last years before Ken’s death. By that time, both of them – Ken more so than Hunter – had become jaded and disillusioned by the justice system, so often a revolving door that failed to keep brutal criminals off the street.

He pulled himself back to the present and went over some of Ken’s notes, trying to read between the lines. He remembered Ken telling him that he’d spoken to Blake once in Whitehorse, before April left her job. He said the guy seemed okay but not very sociable. That was understandable for an army deserter trying to keep his distance from any kind of law enforcement.

Hunter himself had submitted notes on an interview with Fred Klimmer. The man had told him he’d moved to the Yukon several years earlier from northern Manitoba. His story corresponded to provincial records. He’d had no history of run-ins with law enforcement in Manitoba or the Yukon. Investigators had more or less eliminated him as a suspect based on his past history and lack of a motive.

Although not homicide investigators at the time, Hunter and Ken had both done some of the leg work on the case, and he remembered interviewing some of the residents of Johnson’s Crossing and Teslin, the settlements closest to Blake’s cabin, soon after Blake’s disappearance. It never came to light that Blake was a deserter, nor that he was on the run after the murders in Louisiana. Both Johnson’s Crossing and Teslin were on the Alaska Highway but by November, when the main tourist season was over, any strangers spending time in town or asking about Martin Blake should have attracted attention and come up in their interviews.