Northern Lights: A Due South Novel

Chapter 5: Don't Forget Your Bear Spray

Three officers in red serge made their way through the forest like the Mounties of old, but for the rugged laptop on which Constable Franklin flipped through reports and crime scene photos. As they scrambled down the slope, Elizabeth kept her eyes on the trees and her nose in the air. She smelled nothing but northern pine, dry winter air, and powdery snow, now at least a week old. They stopped where the ground flattened, just above the canyon's edge, where yellow police tape encircled an area roughly fifty feet square.

Fraser took a deep breath. "What do you see, Constable?"

"Well, it's rather bright, sir," Franklin squinted.

"Constable Fraser?"

Elizabeth crouched, staring at the boot prints.

"These are Tamara's," she said, pointing at a set of prints leading towards the edge. She knew those boots, a woman's size 7, with their distinctive star tread. "She was backing up. Away from someone."

Elizabeth pointed several feet over at a much larger set of prints that pushed deeper into the hard packed snow. "A man, most likely. He wore size 10 boots and weighed at least two hundred pounds. And..." she pointed at a set of large bear paw prints on top of the boot prints, each with claws several inches long. "Kevin's on the move."

Kevin was the largest grizzly bear in the area. He often denned on the slopes above the canyon and emerged from his hibernation in April. Kevin would only wander in February if something, or someone, had disturbed him.

Montgomery sniffed the snow around the prints. When she lowered her nose to the ground, Elizabeth detected a spicy whiff that made her sneeze. She crouched, scooped up some snow, and tasted the fire of concentrated capsaicin peppers. "Someone used bear spray here. Did any of the investigators need to deter a grizzly?" she asked Franklin.

"Not that I heard of."

Elizabeth turned around. The bear prints continued up the canyon, going upstream. So did Tamara's footprints. But she couldn't tell if the bear had followed Tamara, or had arrived after her death.

Elizabeth slipped under the tape. Keeping away from the footprints, she examined the trees. Several had broken branches, as though someone had grabbed them and pulled hard, especially those closest to the cliff.

As she reached the cliff's edge, Elizabeth saw where Tamara's boots had dug in so deep that she'd reached the rock beneath the snow. Tamara had stood with her back to the cliff while the man had stood above her, facing her. His boots had also slipped in the snow, as though they'd been grappling for something. There were no bear prints here. Instead, the spice of capsaicin mixed with sulphur: gunpowder.

"Someone fired a gun here," she said, looking around. "But they didn't find a bullet in Tamara's body."

"There was a wound, though," Fraser finally spoke up. He took the laptop and showed her a close-up of Tamara's jacket, where something had torn through the left shoulder and grazed the skin enough to bleed.

Elizabeth nodded. "A right-handed man, then. She reaches for the gun to push it away and it goes off, but misses."

"Yet he doesn't get a second shot," Fraser said. "Why?"

A howling gust tugged on her hat and tilted her off balance. She clapped one hand over it to hold it on while grabbing the nearest tree for balance. As she swung out over the canyon's edge, with her feet still planted on the ground, she stared down at a ledge some ten feet below. There, in the snow, was something black and metal. Something the local investigators had missed.

When the wind let up, Fraser grabbed her free hand and pulled her back in. "Try to stay on solid ground, Constable."

"Understood, sir." Grasping the tree with both hands this time, she inched towards the edge and leaned over, pointing down.

"He didn't get a second shot, Superintendent, because Tamara grabbed his gun. And sent it over the cliff."

Elizabeth grabbed the back of Franklin's tunic to stop him from going over the cliff.

Once each Mountie had a good look at the gun, her brief wave of triumph receded, leaving her with emptiness again. She couldn't tell Tamara this story. Couldn't ask her about this investigation.

"How did I do, sir?" Elizabeth asked.

"Marvellous," Franklin said.

"Excellent results, Constable." But Fraser was at the end of his stern superior officer routine. He laughed, a mix of admiration and disappointment in his eyes. "I missed the gunpowder."

"I was closer," Elizabeth apologized.

Retrieving the gun took a long rope, climbing skills, a tree, and the Fraser family's trademark disregard for personal safety. Elizabeth, the lightest of the three officers, took the job. The howling wind found every gap in her tunic as she scrambled down the exposed rock, grasping roots and handholds as she went. Snow melted on her black leather gloves and dampened her breeches. Each time she slipped, the rope caught her. Montgomery and Ogilvie sat at the edge of the cliff, whining and watching as she descended.

Fraser wished he was the one climbing the canyon wall, but his aching back made him glad that Elizabeth had volunteered. Age was delivering the bill for a lifetime of gunshot wounds, jumping out of windows, and climbing atop moving cars.

The ledge was only as wide as Elizabeth's feet were long. She inched along it, then lowered herself until she could reach the gun at her feet. Grasping it by the butt, she shivered as she brought the gun into view. It was a prohibited handgun, the same model as the guns she had confiscated outside Dawson City two days earlier. When she opened the chamber to unload it, it even held the same type of prohibited magazine. The gun had fired two bullets, but the crime scene investigators had found none at the scene.

Placing the gun and magazine into the bag clipped to her harness, she scoured the ledge, but found nothing more. The find gave her strength as she ascended. They had a weapon. A weapon, even an illegal weapon, could be traced. And a weapon proved what she already knew: this was no accident. This was murder.