Murder at five finger light (8 page)
Karen pounded a fist on the table lightly in frustration, sighed, and more pieces of her story came pouring out.
“I’d finally had enough, so I moved—to Seattle. When he showed up there again a couple of weeks ago, I left, drove up and caught the ferry in Bellingham, but somehow he followed me and got on too. I took a cabin and stayed in it. When we got to Ketchikan I knew he’d be watching to see if I got off, so I said I had sprained my ankle and had them take me off from the car deck in a wheelchair, like an old lady. It worked, for once. I saw from inside the terminal that when the ferry left he was still on it—near the gangway, watching everyone getting off and looking for me. I caught the next plane to Juneau, then to here, thinking he wouldn’t expect me to double back. When I saw him get off here, I knew that somehow he’d figured it out. Now he’s looking for me here, so I’m in real trouble.”
“We might try the police,” Jessie suggested, realizing she had said “we.”
“They’ll just call Ketchikan and I know what those guys will say. Believe me, law enforcement will do no good at all.”
Probably not, Jessie thought. The police could seldom provide the round-the-clock protection this kind of stalking demanded. A sinking feeling played havoc with her appetite as she sat staring speechless at Karen over the rapidly cooling seafood dinner she had anticipated enjoying. The relaxing evening she had expected to spend on her own had suddenly taken an unwelcome and confusing turn. She knew the fear of an abusive relationship from a past, but less intense and stressful, experience of her own. She also knew that because of it she was inclined toward sympathy and assistance. This was not the same, however, and she only knew a little about one side of a situation that made her hesitant to involve herself—but her reluctance was mixed with understanding and support.
“I’ve got to find someplace to hide tonight and figure out how to get out of here tomorrow somehow,” Karen said, frowning, her eyes still full of anger, fear, and fatigue. “Do you have any ideas? Where are you staying?”
With a sinking sensation, Jessie, envisioning her hotel room with its two beds, knew that, chancy or not, she was about to suggest it as a solution for the night.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KAREN’S ACCEPTANCE OF THE SUGGESTION THAT THEY share the hotel room did nothing either to lessen or to justify Jessie’s edgy feeling. But her effusive appreciation and evident relief seemed sincere.
“That’s a generous thing for you to offer when you only just met me,” she said slowly. “If you’re really sure it’s okay, I won’t say no. Where else can I go? I don’t dare have my name on a hotel register. Thank you.”
When she insisted on picking up the check for both dinners, Jessie relaxed her wariness a little and turned instead to considering a less conspicuous way to return to the Tides Inn than the route down the main street that she had taken on her way to the Northern Lights. Leaving the restaurant, they once again crossed the bridge over the slough and went quickly along Sing Lee Alley. Then, instead of turning left on Nordic, they crossed it and climbed another block up the hill to First Street, which in three blocks brought them to the upper level of the hotel.
“Didn’t you have a suitcase?” Jessie asked as they went down to enter the passageway that led directly to her room.
“I left it with the bartender at the Harbor Bar,” Karen told her. “But I sure don’t want to go back in there tonight to get it. Would you mind terribly doing me one more favor?”
Jessie agreed, remembering the errand she had planned earlier. “I wanted to stop next door for some booze to take to the island tomorrow anyway.”
So leaving Karen safely ensconced in the hotel room, she went first to the liquor store, then to the bar next door.
“Oh, sure,” the bartender said, when asked for Karen’s bag. “It’s right here, safe and sound.” She handed it out from behind the bar with a smile. “Your friend said she’d be along to pick it up after you had dinner.”
“She did?”
“Yes. She seemed surprised to find you had already gone when she came out of the ladies’. Asked if I knew where you were headed and could she leave the case temporarily so she could hurry to catch up. Guess she found you at the Northern Lights. How was dinner? Enjoy it?”
“Yes,” Jessie told her, forcing a smile to accompany her thanks, “we did.”
My friend?
She questioned the term as she hiked back up the hill, laden with Karen’s black bag, a bottle of Jameson and two six-packs of Killian’s in plastic bags—glad she hadn’t far to go. Karen would bear watching, it seemed, and she wondered if she shouldn’t have continued to maintain, as she had decided on the plane, that this woman was none of her business. Still, if Karen had spent a year avoiding a man who seemed to qualify as a stalker, she must have gained some experience in what it took to stay out of his reach by seeming to fit in with other people, and being with Jessie might be part of it. Remembering her own encounter with physical abuse, Jessie couldn’t actually blame her for doing whatever it took to escape.
She questioned the term as she hiked back up the hill, laden with Karen’s black bag, a bottle of Jameson and two six-packs of Killian’s in plastic bags—glad she hadn’t far to go. Karen would bear watching, it seemed, and she wondered if she shouldn’t have continued to maintain, as she had decided on the plane, that this woman was none of her business. Still, if Karen had spent a year avoiding a man who seemed to qualify as a stalker, she must have gained some experience in what it took to stay out of his reach by seeming to fit in with other people, and being with Jessie might be part of it. Remembering her own encounter with physical abuse, Jessie couldn’t actually blame her for doing whatever it took to escape.
Once again, she let the issue go, put down the bag to retrieve the room key from her pocket, opened the door, and found Karen staring at the door like a deer in the headlights, having jumped up from a seat on the bed farthest from the door at the sound of the key in the lock. For just a second Jessie, startled, didn’t recognize her, for she had removed the dark wig and was once again a redhead.
Gotta get used to that wig,
she told herself, as Karen quickly crossed the room to help with the load she was carrying. But the transition from brunette to redhead was so extreme it was astonishing.
she told herself, as Karen quickly crossed the room to help with the load she was carrying. But the transition from brunette to redhead was so extreme it was astonishing.
“Thanks for retrieving this,” Karen said, taking her bag after setting the lager and whiskey on the floor in a corner by Jessie’s duffel. Then she hesitated and asked politely, “Which bed is yours?”
“It doesn’t matter to me. Take the one you were sitting on if you like.”
Dropping her daypack on the foot of the other bed, Jessie slipped off her green slicker, kicked off her shoes, and flopped back onto the bed with a tired sigh to stare at the ceiling, which, she noticed, had a long crack across it that looked a little like part of an airplane propeller. It had been a long and confusing day, to say the least. There had been more food on her plate at the Northern Lights than she would normally have eaten, but even after cooling during their conversation it had tasted so good that she had eaten most of it and found she was now more inclined toward a nap than the shower she had planned to wash away the grimy feeling of travel.
Karen sat down again on the edge of her bed beside the black bag she had opened to find a toothbrush and pajamas that she held clutched in one hand while she paused to look across at Jessie.
“I want you to know how much I appreciate this,” she said. “I realized while you were gone that I felt safe for the first time in several days and that means a lot.”
Jessie turned her head to look across at her unplanned guest. “I’m glad if you do,” she told Karen. “I know what that’s like—was in a bad relationship myself once, a long time ago. I should think you
are
safe here, so just relax and forget about it, okay?”
are
safe here, so just relax and forget about it, okay?”
With a nod, Karen went to brush her teeth.
As she listened to the water running, Jessie thought about that old abusive relationship and how different it was with Alex, who was a much stronger and more self-assured person. She could not imagine him ever hitting her. When her cell phone rang in the daypack, she knew who it was, as if he had felt her thoughts. Sitting up, she retrieved the phone and answered the call on the third ring, shoving the bed pillows behind her to lean on.
“Hey there,” said his voice in her ear. “How’s the Southeast?”
“Hey yourself. Petersburg’s its usual rainy self. How’s Whitehorse?”
“About the same as always, but it isn’t raining. We got everything done that we wanted to accomplish today. So the RCMP’s going to give us a quick hop back to Dawson tonight, then Tank and I’ll head for home tomorrow instead of Wednesday.”
“That’s good, if you aren’t too tired.”
“Nope. It’s been pretty laid back.”
She could hear music and voices in the background. “Where are you?”
“At the bar in the Gold Rush Inn—sampling the good beer these Canadians have been keeping on tap for us.”
There was a self-satisfied grin in his voice and she could imagine him and Del relaxing in the bar she remembered from a prior visit as pleasant.
“I assume you made it to Petersburg okay,” he said.
“Without a hitch,” she assured him, glad to hear his voice and know that he cared that she arrived safely. But somewhere next to the gladness there was also a small, resentful feeling of having her independence intruded upon—as if he thought she needed to be checked up on. She shrugged it off as she told him about Connie the taxi driver and the grocery clerk’s offer to deliver supplies to the dock the next day.
“Hey, that’s pretty slick service. Do you know when Jim’s going to pick you up?”
“Laurie said sometime around noon. But he’s going to call me from the boat on the way in, so I’ll know where to meet him. How’s Tank?”
“Clair says they’re having a fine time in Dawson. He likes her.”
“He likes being the center of attention and she spoils him,” she pointed out, missing her favorite sled dog.
“Well, I’ll check him out when we get there. We’d wait and go tomorrow, but Del’s anxious to get home and be sure Clair’s okay. You know—new father syndrome.”
There was a pause as he said something aside, then returned to the phone laughing. “He’s threatening to leave me here if I make any more comments concerning his imminent fatherhood.”
As Jessie joined his laughter, Karen came out of the bathroom in her pajamas.
“Do you think . . .” she started to say. “Oh, sorry. I thought you had the television on.”
“That’s okay. I’ll be through in a minute,” Jessie told her, watching as Karen dropped the toothbrush back in her bag and laid her clothes on a chair before moving the bag to the floor beside it.
“Somebody there with you?” Alex asked in her ear.
“A friend I met here,” she told him. “We’re sharing a room tonight.”
“She part of the lighthouse crew?”
“Ah . . . well”—she hesitated—“ah . . . probably not.”
Alex had never been slow on the uptake. “She’s right there and you don’t want to talk about it?”
“That’s right.”
“But it’s okay and you’ll tell me all about it when you get home, yes?”
“Sure.”
“Everything really okay?”
“Yes, fine.” Again, she felt a twinge of
I can take care of myself, thank you very much,
and was surprised when Alex chuck-led, catching it.
I can take care of myself, thank you very much,
and was surprised when Alex chuck-led, catching it.
“Independent as ever. We do better in person than on the phone, don’t we? Why is that?”
“Oh, I think we both like seeing who we’re talking to. There’s a lot that gets said nonverbally.”
“You’re probably right. Well, my beer bottle seems to have a hole in it, so I’ll let you go and find another one. Oops, no more beer—Del says our ride is here.”
“Tell him hello and have a safe flight,” she said. Then, feeling she was relenting in some odd way, “Glad you called, trooper. I’ll call you from Five Finger Light tomorrow night to be sure
you
get home okay.”
you
get home okay.”
“Don’t call too early. It’s a long drive so I’ll leave at the crack of doom and drive till I get there. I love you, Jess.”
“I love you too. Take good care.”
“You bet.”
He hung up and she immediately missed him.
Can’t have it both ways,
she told herself, and dropped the phone back in the daypack.
she told herself, and dropped the phone back in the daypack.
“Trooper?” asked Karen. “Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“My friend’s an Alaska State Trooper,” Jessie told her.
“Oh. What do
you
do?”
you
do?”
“I run a kennel and race sled dogs.”
Recognition dawned on Karen’s face. “I thought your name sounded familiar. You’re that Iditarod racer, aren’t you?”
The conversation turned in that direction for the next few minutes, until Jessie escaped to take the shower she had planned earlier. When she came back, clean and refreshed, rubbing her short honey-colored curls semidry with a towel, Karen was already in bed watching the news on television with a frown.
“Death, disease, and disaster,” she said, turning it off. “Can’t they ever report anything positive?”
Jessie grinned and shook her head. “My feelings exactly. Well, for a week at least I don’t have to know what’s happening anywhere but on a tiny island in the vastness of Frederick Sound. What are you going to do about the situation tomorrow, Karen?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll have to figure out something—just not right now.”
“True.”
“But maybe . . .” Karen began, but stopped suddenly at the sound of heavy footsteps that hesitated in the passageway outside their door. Her eyes widened and she sat up straight in the bed, listening intently, one hand clutching wrinkles into the sheet.
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