Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (300 page)

“Down, yes, but …” Green struggled to slow down his impatience. These were the search experts, not him. As Sullivan kept reminding him.

As usual, Jethro had said nothing to that point but now he handed Green a thermos of hot soup. “Another thing. On the other side of those mountains there’s an old mining road. Not much of it left anymore, but you can still get out that way on foot.” He pointed into the snow-capped mountain range in the distance. It was the longest speech he had made all day.

“On foot?” Green sized up the mountains. “But it’s got to be fifty miles!”

Jethro shrugged. “Locals used to walk that easily. Take a month to walk out from their traplines in the bush in the spring. But it’s not fifty miles. Maybe only a few days’ walk to the point where an ATV could manage it. There’s an operating mine back up in there, and they’ve fixed up some of the road.”

For the first time in days, Green felt a surge of hope. He turned to Elliott. “We should inform the SAR team. They should keep an eye on that road.”

“Trust me, they’re on top of it. If the kids come out through there, they’ll know.”

After lunch they began to hike up the Little Nahanni River. The light drizzle continued. Between the steep slopes and slippery rocks, progress was slow and frustrating. At times they had to hack a path through dense brush and other times they splashed through the shallow water’s edge. Smaller, nimbler, and more experienced, Jethro went ahead with his dog to check out the trail for signs of other people. He had retreated back into his silence. The other three straggled along in single file, their mood like the mist hanging heavy around them. After an hour, Green’s whole body was scratched by spiky spruce branches, his clothing was soaked, and his spirits sodden.

But he trudged on. If somewhere back in here was the mining claim and an exit road, he would walk through fire to find them.

Until they reached an impasse. Rounding a bend in the river, Green could see a canyon cutting through the mountain ahead of them. Nothing but sheer rock and rushing water. Then, high above them on top of a cliff, he saw Jethro searching the distant peak with binoculars. Elliott held up his hand and Green stopped. After a few minutes Jethro turned to go back into the bush. Still Elliott waited without speaking until Jethro emerged from the forest, barely ten feet in front of them. He walked slowly, peering at the branches and ground carefully.

“They didn’t come this way,” he said.

“How do you know?” Green asked.

Jethro merely looked at him before pushing past and heading back down the river.

“They would have had to set up their base camp here,” Elliott explained. “If not earlier. And they would have taken that path on foot. If Jethro saw no tracks, there are none.”

“But it’s raining! And animals could have disturbed the trail.”

No one replied. Green looked up at the tumbling river. “We’ve wasted the whole fucking day!”

“Mike, shut up,” Sullivan muttered as he turned to follow Jethro. The others trudged back without a word.

That evening, while the rest pitched camp, Jethro stripped a willow branch and, without a word, headed along the riverbank with Tatso at his heels. A short time later he reappeared with three large trout. Elliott cheered and stored the dehydrated stew he’d been preparing back into its container.

A small grin sneaked across Jethro’s face. He gutted and filleted the fish with a few swift knife strokes, and within minutes the aroma of frying fish and wood smoke filled the air. Green’s stomach contracted. He realized he was famished. As he polished off two helpings of fish and bannock, he felt his tension slip away.

After the dishes had been washed and the food safely stored, they gathered around the fire, drooping with fatigue. It was past ten o’clock. The valley was still misty grey, but shafts of sunlight lit the clouds with gold. Elliott rummaged in his backpack and pulled out a bottle of single malt Scotch. Sullivan whistled. Elliott poured a generous measure into their plastic mugs.

As the Scotch burned down Green’s throat, it brought tears to his eyes. He took a deep breath. “Sorry for being such a jerk today. This is tiring, discouraging work, but I know we all want the same thing. Jethro, you’re the expert, and I’m so damn grateful you volunteered to help. Brian here will tell you I can be a real pain in the ass sometimes —”

“Sometimes?” Sullivan said. Smiles broke out.

“When I fix my mind on a goal, it’s hard for me to set it aside or listen to others’ points of view. But you two — Ian and Jethro — are lifesavers.” He looked into his Scotch glass, mostly empty now. “Don’t ever think I don’t appreciate what you’re doing.”

Elliott leaned over to top up his glass. Green hesitated, tempted, before moving his glass out of reach. “It certainly takes the edge off all this crap, but I’d better stop. One more sip and I might say something dumb.”

“Impossible,” Sullivan said.

Elliott grinned. For a man of action, he seemed remarkably at ease with sentiment. “A lot happens around these campfires,” he said. “What is said here stays here. I have two kids myself. Grown and married now, but you never stop worrying about them. If it was me in your shoes …”

Jethro glanced up. He was sitting by the edge of the camp, drinking his own tea rather than Scotch. He looked far less at ease with sentiment. “We will find them. Tomorrow we go on. There are other creeks. Other places to hide a camp.”

Green awoke the next morning with a fresh optimism and a surprisingly clear head. As if in concert, the rain had stopped and the sun was breaking through the clouds in the east. They were back in the canoes by eight o’clock, with their damp rain gear spread over the packs to dry in the sun. The river was muddy with the silt from the Little Nahanni, but its flow was steady and deep. Occasional branches bobbed downstream beside them. Green and Sullivan drifted on the current and focused on watching the shores. Not just scanning the muddy gravel bars but peering into the dense forest as well. If Scott’s party was trying to avoid detection, they would camp inland under cover of the trees.

In almost no time, the next inlet was upon them. Smaller and shallower than the Little Nahanni River, it rumbled through a narrow gap in the steep banks. Hugging to river right, Jethro paddled hard through the gap toward a far bend. Green and Sullivan drew their canoe alongside Elliott’s.

“What’s in there?” Green asked. “Looks pretty small.”

“It is, at this point. But there’s a —”

A shout up ahead stopped him. Jethro. At the second shout, this one sharp with excitement, the three of them dug in their paddles and fought the current through the gap. Green was panting hard by the time they rounded the bend and found themselves in an open area with a cliff on one side and a flat expanse of mud on the far side. Tangled in a mess of mud and debris was a jumble of brightly coloured gear. Jethro raced his canoe across and ran it up on the beach.

Green could barely speak. Joy and terror shot through him. Joy that maybe they had finally found the camp. That everything wasn’t at the bottom of the river. That maybe he was one step closer to finding Hannah. Terror because the camp had been obliterated. Limbs, boulders, and whole trees were strewn across the gravel beach, their leaves still green even in death. A canoe had been picked up and tossed halfway into the willow thicket behind, and tarps and dry bags were scattered. Everything was covered in mud. Backpacks had been ripped open, clothes and supplies hung in the trees.

Green’s voice stuck in his throat. He felt a gentle squeeze as Sullivan placed his hand upon his arm. Sullivan found the words he couldn’t.

“What the hell happened? A bear? Caribou stampede?”

Elliott shook his head. “Last week’s storm. Caused a flash flood down this valley. Probably swept right across this beach, and everything that wasn’t nailed down …”

Green found his voice. “What does that mean?”

Elliott pointed to the snow-capped mountains that towered to the south. “All the rain that falls in those mountains flows down into these creeks. If it’s a lot of rain in a short time, as it was last week, the water coming down this creek can triple in volume within hours. Less. It’s got nowhere to go but down that canyon and across the flat bars like this.”

“But …” Green groped for hope, “there would be a warning, right? They’d see the water rising and they’d move to higher ground.”

Jethro had been picking his way carefully toward the woods beyond the beach. He looked back and merely shook his head.

“Last week’s storm was in the middle of the night,” Elliott said. “If they were inside the tent, sleeping …” His voice trailed off, leaving the worst unsaid. Somewhere beneath that pile of mud and debris, four young bodies might be buried in their beds.

Elliott clambered to the top of the canyon and phoned in a report to the SAR team, requesting assistance in the form of digging equipment, extra manpower, and paramedic support. Planes could not land in the area, but a helicopter could do a drop or pickup. Green listened as he argued with Bugden over jurisdiction, because the location was outside the current park boundaries and therefore under RCMP rather than Parks Canada control. Even out in this wilderness, the fucking red tape ruled, Green thought.

In the end, Bugden agreed to liaise with the RCMP, but indicated it would take at least twenty-four hours and a hefty chunk of local resources to organize a search. He hoped the missing party had insurance.

Green stared at the piles of debris, fuming. Every hour counted. What if Hannah was trapped under there? What if she could hear him but hadn’t the strength to call out?

“We can’t wait,” he snapped once Elliott had reported on the call. “What if someone is alive under there?”

“That’s unlikely,” Elliott said softly. “It’s been over a week. With the cold nights and with no food —”

“They could get water, and that’s the most important thing. Earthquake victims survive for days!”

Jethro had walked to the far end of the mud flat with Tatso, where the two stood motionless. Green realized he was sniffing the wind. Green’s skin crawled. He knew the smell Jethro was trying to detect. He forced himself to take a short, tentative sniff. Mud, musk, and the tang of spruce, but not a whiff of body decay. He allowed only a tingle of relief to sneak through his fear. Jethro probably had a much better nose. Certainly the dog did. He watched as both turned and walked back along the water’s edge. Jethro seemed to be studying the flow of water and the pattern of debris on the shore.

“They would have drowned,” he said. “To move these heavy trees and boulders this far up onto the shore, the water had to be very high. All this gravel flat would have been covered with water, probably for almost a day before it started to recede.”

A chill of dread coursed through Green anew. He fought for a toehold of hope. “But it’s still possible they found a shelter or an air bubble. You didn’t smell their bodies, did you? We have to search!”

Jethro started to shake his head but Elliott intervened. “You’re right. No point doing nothing while we’re waiting. Let’s start digging.”

After rounding up sturdy branches, pots, utensils, the hatchet, and the camp saw to aid in the digging, they began to tackle the wreckage. For hours they searched. With a process to focus on, Green could distract himself from the horrific possibilities of the end result. He insisted that the whole operation be treated like a crime scene, with careful excavation, notes, and photos at each new step so that afterward they might be able to piece together what had happened. No one dissuaded him.

The boulders and the uprooted trees presented the greatest challenge. With no means to dislodge them, the team dug around and under them. It was slow, tedious work and often the surface debris was cleared away to reveal nothing underneath.

Out of the muddy, rocky mess, they unearthed tarps, packs, life jackets, and canoe paddles, as well as the contents of bags broken open and strewn around. But they did not find a single body part. Each new discovery was cleaned and laid out in the sun on the riverbank. By the end of the day the remaining canoe was the only thing that had not been checked out. It lay pinned upside down beneath a massive tree trunk. The cavity beneath it was large enough to conceal — and possibly protect — a person, but all their efforts to push, pull, and pry it away had been in vain. Elliott had even cut a hole in the hull and peered through, but could see nothing through the debris.

The others paused for rest and food. Elliott was doctoring blisters, but Green couldn’t relax. “We need to get underneath that,” he said to Sullivan.

Sullivan was sitting on a rock, propped against the canoe and looking tired and discouraged. “It won’t budge.”

“We can rig up a pulley by wrapping ropes around several trees so we can pull the tree off.”

“There is no one underneath,” Jethro said.

“I don’t see how you —”

The guide gestured to his dog, who sat peacefully at his side. “She would tell us.”

Words stuck in Green’s throat. Furious, he grabbed a few lengths of rope and headed over to the fallen tree. The others watched for awhile as he fed the rope around the trunk and wound the other end around a nearby spruce. Soon the others set aside their food and joined the effort.

It took all their ropes and numerous configurations but the large tree finally began to shift. An inch or two at a time, until Green and Sullivan were able to pull the broken canoe out.

There was nothing underneath but sand.

Green sank back on the ground. He wanted to weep. “Where the fuck are they?”

“Swept down the river,” Elliott said. “I think that’s what happened to the turquoise canoe and the backpack we found. The canoe didn’t dump, it was broken right here by the force of the flood. Probably dashed against the rocks and then swept out into the main river.”

Green was shaking his head. “Okay, I buy that, but all four bodies? Why hasn’t anyone found a single body floating on the river?”

“They wouldn’t have been wearing life jackets,” Elliott said. “They could still be on the bottom.”

“One of them would have washed ashore. Surely! Along with more gear.”