Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (294 page)

Finally the woman came back on the line. “Victor Whitehead, born Watson Lake, Yukon Territory, December 3, 1973. Mother is Isabelle Lasalle — well, you know that. Father John Whitehead. Isabelle worked hard all her life, trained as a youth counsellor, and worked for Social Services, camp director, women’s shelter, all kinds of victims’ groups. She made sure her son stayed on the right path, went to university, and got a good profession.”

“Good for him. What does he do?”

“I think he’s an engineer, but he works for the territorial government here in Whitehorse. In northern development.”

Sue wanted to ask more, but just then the woman sucked in her breath and dropped her voice. “I gotta go. But you got what you needed, right? And I hope you find this young man, whoever he is.”

Sue hung up and glanced over at Bob, who was deep in conversation with some clerk in Victoria, B.C. He was scribbling in his notebook. Must be the will, she decided. Her stomach was grumbling, her head was spinning, and the best part of the day was slipping away. She Googled Victor Whitehead and received nearly ten thousand hits, many of them to do with the long-delayed gas pipeline running from the Arctic down the Mackenzie River valley to the United States. Local news releases, press clippings, transcripts of hearings, survey results, petitions. Victor Whitehead was a busy man. She groaned at the prospect of wading through the websites in search of relevance.

Perhaps it was easier to call Victor Whitehead directly and ask if he knew anything about his cousin Scott. She’d do that, after she’d had some food.

White Horse, February 18, 1944

My Dear Guy,

Our baby was born three days ago but this is the first moment I have had to write. It is a boy, 8 lbs. 8 oz. Blue eyes like mine but they say that might change. He has all his fingers and toes, and he is beautiful. I am naming him William, in honour of our Shakespeare. I will write with more news when I am rested. Mrs. Quinn has moved in to take care of us until I am on my feet. I hope I can survive that!

Your proud but weary wife, Lydia

Chapter Eleven

Nahanni, July 17

 I
an Elliott sank back on his canoe seat, his normally sunny face grim with dismay. Green had just run the canoe up on yet another rock, scraping the plastic bottom with an awful growl. Sullivan was sitting in the stern, flailing his arms.

“Jesus, Mike! I said back ferry!”

“I did! I fucking did! But you said it too late.”

Elliott paddled alongside in his solo canoe and pushed their canoe gently off the rock. They were at the headwaters of the Nahanni, in a shallow stream barely wider than their canoes, practising manoeuvres they would need for the serious rapids downstream.

“No point blaming each other.” he said. “You’re a team. You make a mistake, you solve it and move on. Remember, Brian, this morning Mike didn’t even know what end of the canoe paddle to hold. Now we’re expecting him to handle class III rapids by tomorrow.”

“It can’t be done,” Sullivan said. “It’s suicidal. We should have started farther down the river, below the rock gardens.”

Green held his tongue. In truth, he was terrified. He knew he was putting the other paddlers at risk as well as himself by insisting on starting at Moose Ponds, but there was no other place on the upper river wide enough to land the float plane. The coordinates of the mining claim put the search area near the confluence of the South Nahanni and Little Nahanni, which was just below the terrifying sixty-kilometre stretch of whitewater. To land farther downstream at the next accessible place would be pointless.

Elliott steadied the two canoes and eased them up on the rocky riverbank. He looked thoughtful. “We’ll manage,” he said. “I know every twist and boil in this river, and we have a number of options. We’ll take each stretch slowly. Scout, discuss, plan the route ahead of time. On some of them we can make a canyon rig by lashing two canoes side by side. Other places Brian can solo and I will paddle with Mike. If we need to, we’ll portage or pull the canoes on ropes. We’ll get there.”

They had been practising basic paddling and rescue techniques all day. First in the placid water of the Moose Ponds and now in the trickling current of the rocky stream. Jethro had paddled ahead to wait just below the first run of whitewater. Elliott claimed it was an easy class-I stretch, which would be good practice to assess Green’s skills. They would set up camp at the end so as to start the serious paddling fresh and rested the next morning.

Green ached all over. Blackflies had feasted on his bare flesh. His shoulders and arms screamed from paddling, portaging, and hoisting packs, and his new hiking boots were strangling his feet. His knees felt permanently locked in the kneeling position. Even Sullivan showed the strain of a long day.

To make matters worse, Green had woken up at 4:00 a.m. to sunlight pouring in through the tent window and the sounds of birds, insects, and frogs singing all around him. Picking up his rented satellite phone, the bug spray, and the turquoise bear horn, he’d walked down to sit on a rock on the edge of the pond.

He wasn’t sure what he’d been hoping to see. Some sign that his daughter had been there, perhaps. A lost sock in the outrageous striped pattern she favoured,
a lock of orange-tipped hair, a delicate footprint in
the sand.

But there had been nothing. No sign even that dozens of campers passed through every year. That’s as it should be, Elliott had said earlier. We have no right to desecrate this place. In the morning light, Green had to admit the view was magical. Tendrils of silver mist rose off the water, unveiling a pair of elegant grey swans patrolling the shore. Across the way two moose stood ankle deep, nibbling the reeds. The ponds shone like jewels in the palm of the distant mountain range, at the centre of which a pyramidal, snow-capped peak rose up into the lavender dawn. Mount Wilson, Ian Elliott had said. Now called by its proper Aboriginal name that Green couldn’t pronounce.

Within that extraordinary setting, Green had managed to feel a moment of peace before he remembered why he was there. Then he’d phoned Gibbs and, fighting a cranky satellite signal, he managed to give him a quick update and some follow-up tasks. When he hung up he felt a twinge of guilt. The diligent, eager-to-please young detective was on his honeymoon. It had been long in coming and hard fought, because Sue Peters had refused to get married until she could walk down the aisle unassisted.

Now, twelve hours later, as he savoured a brief respite on the riverbank, he wondered what the two of them had uncovered in the course of the day. He fingered the phone in his pocket, but with an effort he resisted the urge to call them for an update. It would be 8:00 p.m. in PEI and the young couple was probably in the middle of a romantic, seaside dinner. Lobster perhaps. He’d never seen the appeal of the hideous creatures, but others rhapsodized at each succulent, buttery, hard-won morsel.

As if by telepathy, a phone rang. It was coming from inside Elliott’s day pack. Green glanced down the river, but Elliott was standing on a rock in the river, deep in conversation with Sullivan. He seemed to be explaining water patterns.

Green dumped the bag, snatched up the phone and pressed the button. Silence greeted him, followed by a tentative, gravelly voice. “Ian?”

The voice had a familiar ring but Green took a moment to place it. “Warden Fontaine? It’s Mike Green. Have you got something?”

“Yeah. Maybe. A canoe party just came in to Virginia Falls today and they’d spotted a backpack floating in the water. They hauled it aboard and turned it over to me. There’s a name sewn into it: Daniel Rothman. That’s one of your daughter’s party, right?”

Green felt the news like a physical blow to the gut. For a moment he couldn’t breathe. “Yes,” he croaked. He fought back a wave of panic. “Where did they find it?”

“Around Hole-in-the-Wall Creek. A little more than a hundred kilometres west of Virginia Falls, just below Rabbitkettle.”

The unfamiliar names washed over him. “How far from the canoe?”

“Oh, a good sixty klicks or so. But things can drift pretty far down the river and the pack was very buoyant. Have you got your map handy? I can tell you exactly where it was.”

“Just a minute.” Green stumbled along the riverbank, tripping and slipping on the loose stones. He waved the phone but his shouting was drowned out by the rush of the river. Finally he got Elliott’s attention and the man leaped nimbly ashore across the rocks. After handing over the phone, Green watched as Elliott bent over his map and traced the location with his fingers. His face had grown grave. When he signed off, he looked up at Green.

“What do you want to do? That location is below Rabbitkettle. We could call Hunter Kerry back to take us down there. Save a few days.”

“But the backpack would have drifted from farther up, right?”

“That’s likely. But no telling from where.”

Green shook his head. A fierce focus had descended over his mind, sweeping away the panic. “Get someone else to fly up and check out the vicinity. There’s nothing more we can do there.” He swallowed and nodded down the river. “We have to go on.”

It took them less than fifteen minutes to load the gear into the canoes. After a final check of the spray skirts, Elliott pronounced them ready for their very first real whitewater run.

Green took his seat in the bow and stared at the river ahead. More like a boulder-strewn stream than a river. One last time Elliott talked them through the complicated path they would take. It looked impossible. Some of the passages were barely the width of the canoe. On one side was a truck-sized rock and on the other a deadly looking cowlick that would flip the canoe in an instant.

“But remember,” Elliott said with a grin, “you’re wearing a helmet, a wetsuit, and a life jacket. Going for a swim is part of the whitewater experience. Just keep your head up and your feet downstream so you can see where you’re going, and enjoy the ride. Your canoe will be waiting for you at the bottom of the run, with any luck still right side up.”

Sullivan laughed, but only Green’s desperate determination to save Hannah forced him to set foot in the canoe. Then Sullivan nosed them into the current and all possibility for thought vanished in the headlong rush of the river. Green felt the current snatch them and suck them downstream with a roar that overpowered all other sound.

The canoe pitched and rolled through the endless chop. They hit one rock, rode one stretch sideways, and emerged from the run backward, but they survived. Sullivan gave a whoop of joy as he swung the bow around and paddled. Farther downstream around a bend, ready to catch any wayward canoes or gear, were Jethro and his dog. He had already pitched his tent and gathered a pile of driftwood for a fire.

He broke into a broad grin as he grabbed their bow. “Awesome, eh?”

Green clambered from the canoe, weak-kneed and quivering, but he managed a nod.

Encouraged, Jethro continued. “And this is nothing! Wait till we get to Initiation Rapids tomorrow.”

Elliott’s canoe cruised around the bend and slid smoothly up onto the beach as if he’d just been navigating a kid’s backyard pool. He was smiling broadly at the thrill. As they set up camp he talked Sullivan through some of the mistakes he’d made on the run. With adrenaline still coursing through his veins and the evening sun still high, Green was impatient to continue. Elliott, however, stood firm. Fatigue was the cause of many an accident when precise timing and bursts of strength were needed.

Green reluctantly admitted he was right when he found he could barely stand up after dinner. He crawled to the tent he shared with Sullivan and fell into a deep sleep, not waking until Sullivan waved a cup of coffee under his nose.

They were just packing up and loading the canoes when Elliott’s phone rang. Without thinking, Green snatched it up. This time Reggie Fontaine recognized his voice.

“I talked to a guy who flew up the river as far as Rabbitkettle Lake early this morning. Saw two other canoe parties but nothing unusual. Nothing else floating in the water, nothing along the shore. Just wanted to let you know.”

Green was not reassured. Bodies were something he knew a thing or two about. “In this cold water, how many days would it take for a body to surface?”

There was silence, probably as the warden tried to frame a tactful answer. “Hard to say, because in a river current lots of things could pin a body underwater. Like a whirlpool, an underwater rock shelf, or a submerged tree. Especially if the body gets trapped in the branches. But in the absence of those things, as much as a week to ten days. But if he was wearing a life jacket, as he should have, he’ll pop up right away unless he’s pinned.”

Green stared out into the water. He pictured the panicked young man struggling to free himself from a tangle of dense spruce branches. His voice sounded dead to his ears. “And if he’s pinned, how long?”

“Maybe never. I’ve just put in a call to the RCMP, officially reporting a canoeing party missing. I don’t know what the hell’s happened to them, but I figure it’s time to call in the cops.”

Chapter Twelve

Fort Simpson, July 18

 N
ow that the search was official, Constable Christian Tymko no longer had to fabricate an excuse to get permission for an overnight trip to Whitehorse. In a search area as vast and remote as the Nahanni watershed, the RCMP, Parks Canada, and Dehcho First Nations would coordinate the effort using bush pilots, skilled local civilians, and SAR personnel flown in from Yellowknife, perhaps even from Winnipeg.

The problem was that no one knew where to look. Bush pilots and helicopters could fly over the mountains, and teams on the ground could travel down the river, but with only the turquoise canoe and the floating backpack to help pinpoint the location, that was still a lot of territory.

Pearce Bugden and Sergeant Nihls stood in front of the large map on the wall in Bugden’s office and scratched their heads. The locations of the canoe and the backpack were marked with two pins, along with the estimated coordinates of the mining claim. They minutely dissected the bends, currents, and gravel bars upstream, trying to estimate where the party had capsized.