Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (285 page)

After almost an hour of endless water and trees, Green’s optimism began to fade. The winds picked up and the plane swayed and pitched. White clouds grew thicker around them, obscuring the ground. Elliott slowed and dropped down below the clouds just as a small cluster of buildings appeared on the riverbank.

“Nahanni Butte,” Elliott said. “Used to be a fur trading post, now it’s a Dene village. This is where the South Nahanni comes in. All the canoe trips pass through here.”

“I checked with them,” Reg said. “But your daughter’s party won’t be this far down yet. Not for at least another week.”

“Even so,” Elliott said, “we’ll keep an eye out from here on. If you’re being swept along by the current …” His voice trailed off but Green’s imagination finished the thought. If the person was not in control, if they were unconscious or dead, their body might continue far downstream.

“But that’s a thousand to one shot,” Elliott added hastily. “The river is full of twists and shallows. Much more likely they’d run aground. Watch the elbows and the islands especially — one of you river right and the other river left.”

Sitting in the front, Reg reached into a forward compartment and extracted two pairs of binoculars, which he handed back to the detectives. Soon the river spread out into an intricate pattern of narrow channels and gravel islands that looked from the air like a loosely woven braid. Irrepressible, as if programmed by years of guiding, Elliott kept up a running patter about the land below. About the legends of dead trappers and prospectors, about the local First Nations bands and the unique topography. Sinkholes, tufa mounds, hot springs, sand blowouts.

After the first mention of Deadman’s Valley and Headless Creek, Green could barely listen. He alternated between peering through binoculars and staring out over the whole. The land was huge. The canyons — the deepest river canyons in Canada, Elliott announced proudly — soared up three thousand feet of sheer cliff in spots, and the river raged through them in a churn of white. On either side, flat-topped mountains thrust up through the blanket of trees. Miles and miles of barren, unforgiving rock.

How was he ever going to find her?

“Awesome,” he heard Sullivan mutter. Sullivan had given up on the binoculars and was staring ahead in fascination. Up ahead, out of the mist, rose Virginia Falls, twin tongues of foam split around a tall thrust of rock.

“Twice the height of Niagara,” Elliott was saying. “Can you believe they were going to build a hydroelectric dam on it? Can you imagine! All this obliterated by power stations and generating plants and huge corridors of hydro towers?”

He flew on, banking over the falls and coming back for another pass. From the air even Green could see the rugged beauty of the falls plunging down between rock cliffs and spewing white foam high into the air. A cluster of hikers stood on top of the cliff, dwarfed by the sheer size of nature.

They flew on to the park warden’s station, where they stopped to drop off Reg Fontaine, talk to the summer staff, and check the visitors’ log. No word. After another stomach-lurching takeoff, Elliott pointed the Cessna west along the river again and they flew on over the endless ribbon of river. They spotted a bear along the shore but not a trace of humans. Around them, mountains rippled out beneath the leaden sky.

“God, they could be anywhere!” Green said.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think they’re in real trouble,” Elliott said. “Thousands of people have gone down the Nahanni but the list of casualties is very, very small. I know one of their canoes has dumped, but I suspect it’s a matter of pride for them to finish the trip. Paddlers are a stubborn lot. If they were in real trouble, they’d be on the riverbank waving for help or trying to get to the next park station to use the radio. They’d leave their gear where it could be easily spotted from the air or the river. They’re not doing any of the basic things a wilderness paddler would do to get help.” Elliott put on dark glasses as the afternoon sun slipped below the clouds, and he tilted his head to the side, searching the ground.

“They could be injured or trapped!” Green said. “One wrong step or one loose patch of gravel could pitch you off a cliff.”

“Again, it’s possible, but what are the chances all four of them are so badly incapacitated that no one can go for help?”

“They could be lost! Going in the wrong direction. How do you tell where you are in this endless …” Green gestured to the expanse, lost for words.

“Anyone with a basic compass or knowledge of the sun would eventually find the Nahanni. There are dozens of creeks slicing through these mountain ranges and they all flow into the Nahanni. All you’d have to do is follow one of them. Or climb up above the treeline to get a view. Most boy scouts could do it.”

“Maybe Yukon boy scouts, but these are city kids. If their leader, Scott, were injured, I don’t know if any of the others would know what to do.”

Elliott shot him a glance. Behind his dark glasses his face was inscrutable, but he’d stopped smiling. “We’re a long way from doomsday,” he said. “For one thing, if they’ve lost both their canoes, they’d still be a lot further upriver. We’ll go up as far as the Island Lakes and see if we can spot anything. Besides the riverbanks, try searching the nearby creek beds and the alpine slopes. If they’re on foot, they will try to stay out in the open. The walking is easier and they’ll want to be visible.”

They continued to work their way up the river, skimming the razor peaks. Elliott flew as low as he dared. After another hour of staring, Green’s eyes blurred. He sank into a trance. Mountains, valleys, tumbling creeks. Rocky meadows and dark forests. He began to doubt his eyes and his mind. Would he even spot them in all this vastness? Even if they were standing on a mountain peak, waving a dozen red flags?

Just when he thought they’d left civilization for good, they spotted a group of campers on the shore. Nearby the land bubbled and mounded like moon craters.

“Tufa mounds, one of Nahanni’s natural wonders,” Elliott said. “This is one of my groups. We’ll land on the lake and ask them.”

Elliott set the little plane down expertly and taxied to the dock. A short hike took them to the riverbank, where a group was gathering driftwood and pitching their tents. A tall, tanned blonde waved as she walked toward them. She gave Elliott an enthusiastic hug.

“This is a surprise. You staying with us?”

Elliott shook his head and introduced her to Green and Sullivan. “Olivia Manning, another of Nahanni’s treasures. Mike is looking for his daughter. Her party lost a canoe and we’re not sure where they are.”

“The turquoise canoe? Right. We saw it up above Broken Skull River a few days ago.”

Broken Skull River, Green thought, hiding a shudder. Headless Range, Deadman’s Valley, and now Broken Skull River. Good God, what circle of hell had Hannah blundered into?

“Any sign of them along the way?” Elliott asked.

She shook her head. “Not even an SOS marking on the shore. I’ve been on the lookout. If they’re between Island Lakes and here, they’re not making any effort to be seen.”

As a precaution Elliott searched the area and checked the logbook but Green knew Hannah wasn’t there. Olivia was right. If Hannah and her friends were somewhere on the river, they weren’t trying to be found.

Almost as if …

Green pushed that thought away, and once they were airborne again he renewed his search with vigour. Elliott wanted to cover the hundred miles to Island Lake before dinner while the light was still good and before the thickening clouds shrouded the surrounding mountains in fog. The river was peaceful here, drifting down the green valley like a twisting silver ribbon. In the distance to the south, the massive peaks of snow-capped mountains loomed up. Creeks carved erratic paths through the valleys between.

Soon the river took a sudden, angry turn, churning whitewater as it poured around a rock face. Terrifying spires of sheer black rock stabbed up into the sky, marring the landscape like a surreal city of skyscrapers in an alien planet.

“Vampire Peaks,” Elliott said.

“They look impenetrable.”

Elliott grinned. “For some, that’s the challenge.”

They flew over more creeks and gullies. Finally Elliott banked and descended toward a cluster of small lakes that gleamed black beneath the gunmetal sky. He skimmed the surface of the largest lake, rose, and came back around to land. All three men clambered from the plane onto the pontoon, stiff from hours in the air. Mosquitoes swarmed them instantly. Green swatted at them ineffectually as he massaged his aching neck. Sullivan dug out the bug spray.

Elliott seemed oblivious as he stood on the pebble shore, studying the clouds. They had eclipsed the sun and looked restless. “We may get a storm tonight. You two pitch the tent and I’ll get supper.”

Green had never pitched a tent in his life, nor had he ever felt the inclination. His mood was black as he followed Sullivan’s directions. He was exhausted from hours of fruitless searching and terrified at the sheer size of the wilderness in which Hannah was lost. At the core of his despair and fear, against his will and his better judgement, a small kernel of anger was beginning to form.

Elliott himself put words to it as they shared a can of beer and the steaks he had grilled. “It’s odd that we’ve found no trace of them. No distress signals, no gear abandoned to lighten the load. It’s almost as if they didn’t come this way.” He paused and took a long, thoughtful swig of beer. “They never registered with the park, never left a trip plan with the RCMP. As if they didn’t want anyone to know what they were up to. If you’re stranded and want to be found, there are a half dozen ways you can signal for help. But if you don’t want to be found, well then, in this forty thousand square kilometres of wilderness, all you’d have to do is hide. Could that be it?” He looked at Green in the fading twilight.

“Instead of trying to be found, could they be trying to hide?”

Green slept fitfully, disturbed not so much by the tandem snoring of the other two men nor by the eerie grey of the northern night, but by fragments of dreams lurking at the borders of his consciousness. Images of roiling rapids, plunging waterfalls, sheer cliffs, and endless, desolate mountains. Was Hannah wandering around at the mercy of Scott, an unwitting pawn in some scheme of his? Or had she been party to the devious plot from the start? Lying to her parents about her destination and her purpose? He didn’t know which possibility upset him more. That she was a hapless captive or a witting liar.

How well did Green know her anymore? She’d arrived on his doorstep an angry, untrusting teenager consumed with the need to punish him for his years of neglect. She’d lived a reckless life on the edge. Drugs, men, deception — she’d embraced them all in her quest for love, meaning, or just pure oblivion. Father and daughter had won each other over step by timid step, but all too soon she had slipped from his grasp again, back into that toxic swamp of guilt, narcissism, and manipulation that was her mother’s life. Scott had become her next great fascination, her next great answer to the meaning of it all.

In her eagerness to please Scott, what had she done to herself?

The faint baying of a wolf travelled on the night wind. The sound stirred the hairs on Green’s neck. He shivered and pulled his sleeping bag over his head, as much to block out sound as light. Heard a crunch of gravel outside the tent. He lay rigid, barely breathing as he sifted the night sounds. More crunching, sniffing. A bear? A wolverine? Or an inquisitive racoon in search of leftovers?

The other two snored on, oblivious, but long after the snuffling had faded away Green lay awake, new fears competing with the old ones in his mind. He was helpless in this environment, but investigation was what he did best. As soon as he got back to the civilized, manmade world, he would start looking for answers.

The next afternoon, after another fruitless search without a sighting, Elliott piloted the little Cessna back down to the landing dock at Fort Simpson and dropped them off. No sooner was Green back in Andy’s B&B, this time in his own proper guest room with a bed, sheets, and a hot shower, than he was on the phone to Ashley.

“Don’t blame me, Mike!” she whined as soon as he explained his concerns. She always contrived to act as if she was the innocent dupe in everything. “I hardly know anything about Scott!”

“I’m not blaming you. I just need answers. What is Scott’s background? What’s his family like?”

“I never met them. Honestly, Mike, you know Hannah. She lives for herself. Doesn’t share a lot.”

“But she’s been living with you for the past six months.”

“With me? Come on, Mike! Since March she’s practically lived at his place. But he’s a Ph.D. student, Mike. I mean, compared to what she used to bring home …”

Ashley had a point. Where men were concerned, Hannah had the taste of a tomcat and the attention span of a gnat. Six months with any guy, let alone a Ph.D. student, was a minor miracle. “Okay,” he said. “But do you know anything about his background?”

“He’s an only child, grew up in Vancouver with his father. Oh, wait —” Ashley forgot to whine, “he died last winter. The father, I mean. Cancer. He went quicker than expected, and Scott was pretty shaken up. Hannah asked if I could store a bunch of old furniture and boxes from his dad’s place in our basement, just till Scott got his own place.”

“So Scott lived with his father?”

“Yeah. He sold the house, rambling old place in Richmond. He got a nice pile of money for it, that’s why he splurged on this trip. The Nahanni was a dream of a lifetime, Hannah said.”

“What did the father do?”

“I don’t know, Mike.” The whine was back. Green heard some conversation in the background, presumably with Fred. “A prof at UBC, retired last year, Fred says. History. But he was born in the north.”

Green grew alert. “Where in the north?”

Her voice was muffled. “Fred, did Scott say where in the north? …Whitehorse?”

Green pondered the relevance. Whitehorse was in a different territory much farther west. “Any relatives up there? Brothers and sisters?”