Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (307 page)

Jethro stopped so abruptly that Green crashed into him. “Look!” Jethro whispered.

Green peered ahead, but could see nothing but trees. Jethro inched forward. He was crouching, every sense alert. At his side, Tatso wagged her tail excitedly. Slowly the silhouette of a peaked roof emerged through the brush.

“It’s a cabin,” Jethro whispered.

“A cabin! Here?”

Jethro nodded. “There are old cabins scattered all through the mountains around here. Trappers built them, sometimes prospectors too. Mostly in the valleys and by creeks where the game is plentiful.” He approached until the whole outline of the log structure was visible in what had once been a clearing but was now filled with wildflowers; pinks, purples, and vivid red. The cabin was little more than a shack with a filthy window, a splintered front door, and a roof that was collapsing on one side. The rough spruce logs were grey with age, the corners encased in blackened tin.

Green was about to rush forward when Jethro grabbed his arm. He pointed to the ground, where even Green could distinguish the faint outline of a tread.

“Someone’s been here.”

Jethro left Green on watch at the edge of the clearing as he circled the cabin and approached from the rear. Green waited impatiently as the man slowly worked his way around, inspecting the ground at each step. Finally he reached the splintered door, which had been patched with a chunk of rough lumber. After a cautious push, it creaked loudly open.

They both froze, listening. Nothing. Jethro sniffed and poked his head inside.

“Sometimes porcupines take up residence in this prime real estate,” he said. “Or wolverines. Don’t want to surprise one of those.” After a quick peek, he motioned to Green and stepped through the crack. Green rushed forward.

The first thing to hit him was the stink. A powerful musky animal smell that choked his lungs.

“Is there an animal in here?”

Jethro shone his flashlight across the floor and into the corners. “Porcupines, but they’ve been evicted. Someone has swept this place out.”

As Green’s breathing and eyesight adjusted, he noticed the primitive but neat interior. The cabin was about twelve feet square. A rough bunk bed took up one corner and a makeshift oil-drum stove the other. A table and two wooden chairs, one with a broken back, sat in the middle. Cool, fresh mountain air blew through the broken window at the back.

“Oh, wow!” Jethro was looking around the room and for the first time since Green had known him, he looked excited. “This is it! There was an old rumour in the bush about a lost cabin up near the Little Nahanni. A trapping cabin built by a couple of prospectors near their claim.”

“You mean the Lasalles? This is the Lasalle cabin?”

Jethro nodded. “No one’s found it in years.”

“Obviously …” Green picked up the fresh spruce bough with its needles still green that was propped against the wall by the door. “Someone found it.”

“And recently.”

“My daughter’s group?”

“Probably. That spruce is less than a week old and that patch on the door is new. Most of these cabins are fifty to a hundred years old, from the trapping and prospecting days, and most have fallen down. The land reclaims its own. But hikers and trippers do use them, and they’re encouraged to repair them the best they can.”

Green looked around. There was not a single trace, not even a food wrapper, to suggest anyone had been there. His wave of euphoria crumbled. “They’re gone,” he said. “Almost looks like they were trying to erase their tracks.”

“That’s common. ‘Leave no footprint’ is the park motto. And you don’t want to leave anything that would attract animals.” Jethro was inspecting the interior of the wood stove. “But there was a fire in here recently. Not today, but recently.” He pried the cabin door open further, allowing daylight to flood the interior. Green began a systematic examination of the room, as if it were a crime scene. The table top was clean and free of dust. There were no mattresses on the bunk beds but the wooden slats were also free of dust. Swept into a crack between the floor planks, he found the foil wrappings of a pill. VIL was visible. Probably Advil, which was hardly a surprise. He’d consumed almost his whole bottle of the anti-inflammatory pain reliever himself on this trip.

The walls were rough logs with moss, lichen, and mud stuffed in the gaps to ward off the cold. Visitors had carved initials, dates, and simple messages into the wood. Most were quite old, with dates in the 1950s and 60s. Some of the messages were hard to read. Some were funny: “Beware the killer stove,” “porcupine heaven.” Some hinted at trouble: “Snowed in,” “Love you, LL Scary mountain.” The date of that one was 8/4/45, signed GL. Green’s pulse spiked. Guy Lasalle? Was he referring to the mountain behind them?

“Bullet hole,” Jethro said. He was standing on the front stoop, poking at the door.

Green spun around. “Don’t touch it.” He hurried over. In the middle of the door, about chest high, was a small round hole.

“Some nights when you’re staying in these cabins you get a visit from a grizzly,” Jethro said, “or a pack of wolves. Especially in the early spring when they’re hungry and you’ve got food in here. You’re not going to open the door to go after them, but you might shoot through it if you’re desperate.”

Green shone his flashlight at the hole and shook his head. “This bullet was shot from outside, into this room.” He fished around in his pack for his camera and took a series of shots. Then he took out a long, thin steel tent peg, cleaned it off, and slid it carefully into the hole. The peg pointed straight across the room toward the broken window on the opposite wall. With his flashlight he inspected the window. Fragments of glass littered the ground outside, but there was no sign of the bullet or an indent outside.

Fear stirred in the pit of his stomach. “It looks as if the bullet broke this window and disappeared somewhere into the woods. Judging from the diameter of the hole in the door, it’s a large calibre rifle, probably pretty powerful.”

“Most rifles in these parts aren’t toys. They’re made to stop grizzlies or moose.”

“A grizzly or moose wouldn’t be inside here,” Green said. “Someone fired a shot at something in here.”

“Fired two shots.” Jethro had moved to the other side of the window near the front corner, where another hole was barely discernible in the log. Like the other hole it was waist high and had a horizontal trajectory. This time, however, the shot was angled to the right and when Green searched the other side of the cabin, he found the exit hole buried in the corner.

Bile rose in his throat. Forcing himself to think, not like a father but like a police officer, he squatted to examine the floor. The plank floor was well swept but decades of debris had collected in the cracks. Water stains and black patches marred the old wood, but he couldn’t see any traces of blood. Not even the smallest drop. Maybe both bullets had missed their mark and passed harmlessly by. How he wished for luminol!

He went outside to see where the bullets had come from. The wildflowers in front of the cabin were undisturbed, but he traced a line with his eye back to a copse of trees about twenty feet away. The gunman might have hidden there and fired at the cabin wall, but he would have little idea what he was shooting at, beyond a vague form visible through the front window. The two shots, aimed more than three feet apart, suggested he’d been guessing.

Green walked out to the copse of trees and studied the area. Propped against a tree was a very old axe with a rusty head but polished blade. On the ground sat an upended stump, which was covered with wood chips, as was the surrounding ground. Even Green, who bought all the wood for his fireplace precut, recognized this as a chopping block.

He picked up a wood chip and held it to the light. It had not yet turned grey. He sniffed it. Sweet resin tickled his nose.

Jethro had been watching him and now joined him with a smile. “You read the signs just like me. Just different signs. The cuttings are very recent.”

Green was on his hands and knees, probing the soft ground. “No casings, but the shooter might have picked them up, if he was trying to cover up all evidence of
the crime.”

“Crime? There are lots of stories about shootings in the bush, half of them maybe even true. Freaked-out hikers mistaking a person for a bear, or getting bush fever and shooting anything that moved. Like a porcupine in the cabin.”

Green pushed himself back to his feet and dusted off his hands. He shook his head. “Maybe, but I don’t like the looks of it. The wood fibres in the hole don’t look weathered. That means those bullet holes are recent. I don’t know how recent, but certainly not from Guy Lasalle’s time.”

White Horse, October 20, 1944

Dear Guy,

The trip home was difficult. Endless delays and detours! Whitehorse had six inches of snow when we arrived, with more promised. There is nothing in the stores. Nothing! I am not spending another winter here. My mother insists we go to Vancouver. She says they have fresh milk, butter, and sometimes even eggs in the stores. I love you, and I worry about you in that wretched cabin all winter, but I have to think of our little boy now too. He’s not going to remember his father by the spring.

There is no money in the bank, and still no letter here from Gaetan. No one in town has seen him. He is probably having a gay old time in Alaska somewhere and has forgotten all about the squaw and the child.

Forgive me, that sounds petty. I am not myself. William and I are both tired and hungry and cold. I promise to take care of us if you take good care of you, my love.

Your loving, ever-waiting wife, Lydia

Green had to clamber halfway up the hillside behind the cabin, to a point where the forest thinned abruptly, before he could get a signal on the sat phone. He checked in first with Sullivan, who reported that a single rescue helicopter with a long extraction line had flown in. Rothman’s sister had bullied her way onto the crew manifest by virtue of being a medical doctor. A rookie constable from the Fort Simpson detachment had also accompanied the SAR team, but she had almost no clue how to evaluate the scene.

“I gave her a crash course in the basics,” he said with a chuckle. “They’re just setting up the extraction now, and once we get the post-mortem results we’ll know whether a full Ident team needs to be deployed here. I had a lot of time yesterday to search the campsite and the body for evidence of foul play.”

“And did you find any?”

“Not directly.” Sullivan paused. Green could almost see him running his broad hand through his brush cut, as he always did when he was disturbed. “Just a minor inconsistency. As you recall, Daniel had a penetrating skull fracture like he’d hit a sharp stone, but I couldn’t find any stone consistent with that in the vicinity. Nothing with blood, tissue, or hair on it.”

“That could have been washed away.”

“Agreed. Or he could have hit a rock halfway down. It’s impossible to search that cliff face without rappelling equipment. It’s just a small thing. Maybe I’ve been spending too long with violent death.”

“How’s the sister taking it?”

Sullivan’s levity vanished. “Like a trooper, under the circumstances. She’s mad as hell, but mostly at Daniel. She says he should have known better. He’s been a wilderness nut and rock climber all his life, but he’s never been reckless. Super safety conscious, in fact, especially since he started medical school and saw how vulnerable the human body is.”

The fear coiled in Green’s core began to grow. “Sounds like he was scared. Maybe running from something?”

“Possibly.”

Green heard the hesitation in Sullivan’s tone. He tensed. “What?”

“Well … I don’t think it’s relevant. I mean, don’t read too much into it.”

“Brian,
what
?”

“She said the only reason Daniel agreed to go on the trip was Hannah. Scott asked him to go, Pete was apparently against it.”

“So what —”

“Daniel was sweet on Hannah. The sister put it bluntly: ‘He would have followed her off a cliff.’”

Before Green could recover his voice, Sullivan exclaimed. “Oh crap, I didn’t mean … I meant, I’m sure
she
meant that his objectivity was compromised. He might have taken risks to protect her that he wouldn’t just for himself.”

“You mean like fending off a bear attack?”

There was silence on the line. Green felt a wave of lightheadedness. Sullivan wasn’t going to say it, but the answer was there in the silence. Daniel might have died so Hannah could live.

Jesus. Poor Hannah.

“So … so how does the sister know about Daniel’s feelings? Are they close?”

“Since he started med school, yes. She’s eight years older than him and was always the big sister who babysat him and took care of him. He’d go to her for advice rather than his parents. So she says, and I believe her. She’s a dynamite woman.”

“So he told her about Hannah?”

“He wasn’t going to go on the trip. He didn’t want to take the time off his studies. But then he met Hannah at a planning meeting and he was head over heels inside of an hour. Cancelled his whole summer program.”

Green thought of Hannah’s record with men. “Was there anything between them?”

“The sister didn’t think so. Daniel was an awkward guy, never the guy to get the girl. Daniel himself figured he didn’t stand a chance against Scott. But he went along just to be with her. And to …” Sullivan’s voice faded.

“To what?”

“Well, he had some doubts about Scott’s judgment. He even asked his sister’s professional opinion. He thought Scott was a bit too high. Too obsessed, too reckless. He wasn’t sure he had a good handle on the challenges of the trip or Hannah’s skill level.”

“Fuck,” Green breathed.

“I’m sorry, Mike. But I thought you should know. It means Scott may have ignored danger signs and pushed them all too hard.”

“And now …” Green squinted down the rocky slope toward the cabin. “They’re running around in this goddamn wilderness without their voice of caution. Without their first aid specialist either.”