After checking in, Dalton chats with one of the ground crew, an older man who’s known Dalton for years. Dalton’s asking if anyone took an inordinate amount of interest in either our last departure or our last arrival.
The Yukon isn’t a place where you ask too many questions, especially up here, where destinations are closely guarded secrets, often lying close to good mining or trapping or hunting. Dalton is unfailingly polite and friendly enough to the staff. He’s well groomed. Well spoken. He follows airport protocol and never causes trouble. He tips just well enough to be appreciated, and not so well that anyone susp
ects he’s sitting on a gold mine. His story is that he’s an independent contractor with a place in the woods, and he runs supplies to companies that appreciate discretion.
Still, as smooth as Dalton’s relationship with the airport is, this is the most likely source of the leak—that Marshal Garcia knew the Rockton supply plane flew in and out of Dawson and made a deal with someone to let him know when it arrived. That would explain his sudden flight from Calgary to the Yukon, tags still on his outdoor gear. He got the call. He came. He followed us into the wilderness.
As Dalton talks to his contact, I wait off to the side, but I can hear the conversation. Dalton is concerned. His clients pay him very well for privacy and discretion, and it seems he was followed on his last flight. He managed to evade his pursuer before his client realized what happened, but his professional reputation is at stake. Did his contact hear or see anything that might suggest anyone noted Dalton’s last arrival or departure? Maybe something as seemingly innocent as another pilot asking to be notified when Dalton arrived because he wanted to speak to him? The contact doesn’t have anything, but he promises to ask around, and Dalton passes him a couple of twenties for his help.
Our car arrives then. We drive halfway to Dawson. Then Dalton takes a rough road, pulls off, and walks into the forest. This is his stash where he keeps a pay-by-use cell phone and a laptop, wrapped up and insulated against the elements.
Dalton used to use the phone primarily to contact his adoptive parents. When he had questions about a resident, he’d set Gene Dalton on the case. He doesn’t do that anymore. Part of that is because he has me, and I can do the research myself. Also, the council revealed that they’re aware he’s in contact with his parents, and while he hopes that just means they’re monitoring the Daltons—and not that his father is informing on him—he’ll err on the side of paranoia. We now have multiple SIM cards for the phone. One he uses to call his parents and anyone else he doesn’t mind the council tracking. The other one is for me to make research inquiries.
On the drive to Dawson, I send two texts for my sister. The only person April deems “phone-call-worthy” is the surgeon she’s consulting with tomorrow. Even then, I just get the woman’s voice mail. April has told me to impersonate her, and I do. I keep the call short and businesslike. I inform her that I was away for the weekend, and I have encountered travel issues with my return, which will prevent me from attending the surgery. Everything the surgeon needs, however, should be in the files I sent last week. If she needs to discuss anything, please email me, but my vacation is also an internet sabbatical. That means I have limited access to my email and none to my cell phone, which is why I’m calling from this number.
I text a similar message to April’s research assistant and a colleague. That’s it. Before my sister came to Rockton, she’d placed one call, presumably a personal one—she’d made the business notifications by email and text. Yet when I asked if I should notify anyone else, she said no. This was, as she said, sufficient, thank you. In other words, her private life shall remain private.
We reach Dawson. It’s midmorning, and the town is bustling as tourist season ramps up. That only means it’s tough to get decent parking, and lodgings will be full. Even at its peak, the town is never crowded. Just busy. That’s still enough for Dalton, and after the third tourist steps out in front of our car, I suggest he drop me at a café while he runs errands outside the town center.
Dawson may be touristy, but this isn’t Orlando, with endless chain restaurants and cheap T-shirt stores. There isn’t a chain restaurant in Dawson, not even the ubiquitous Tim Hortons. Tourists who come here are a very different sort, eager to experience the Yukon wilderness. Those tourists expect that when they come out of that wilderness, one thing they can find is a nice café, with locally roasted coffee, homemade baked goods, comfortable seating, and most importantly, free Wi-Fi. There are a few of those off the main street. At this time of year, they’re all crowded. Dalton drops me at one and happily escapes.
I claim a table outdoors and settle in with my cappuccino and a cookie—okay, two cookies. I have come prepared for an efficient work session. Coffee shops might be good about letting patrons camp out with a laptop, but at this time of year, they’re going to notice if I’m here for five hours, and with the amount of research I need to do, I could be, if I didn’t come with a ready list of questions and search terms.
The first question is the most pressing. Please, Google, tell me what you know about Marshal Mark Garcia, from Washington State.
I don’t like the answer.
No, let’s not mince words. I fucking hate the answer.
I type his name and occupation into an image search, and within seconds I’m looking at the man I watched die two days ago. Of course, the search engine gives me some unrelated results. A guy named Marshall Garcia. A guy named Mark Marshall, who works for Garcia’s Gastropub. But when the page fills with thumbnail images, at least six are pictures of the man who came to our town.
I click on the oldest version of his face. I’m holding my breath as I do. I’m hoping that the word “marshal” is included for some unrelated reason. Maybe it’s his middle name. Or he works for the USMS in a clerical position. Or he used to be a marshal but quit two years ago for a private security job. The last is my most fervent hope. It’s also the most likely. People give up on law enforcement all the time. Crap pay. Crap hours. Danger, disrespect, and derision. The constant temptation of corruption. The high rates of alcoholism, divorce, suicide … It’s not surprising that at some point, many realize being a cop isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Private police work suddenly looks very tempting. Garcia could have been a marshal once and switched to private investigating or bounty work or even murder-for-hire.
He didn’t. It takes only five minutes of typing to confirm, beyond any doubt, that we are dealing with an active employee of the US Marshals Service.
There is a moment, on realizing that, when I am tempted to do something I have never done in my career. Never considered doing. Never could have imagined myself considering.
I consider framing a suspect.
Phil, to be precise.
I have known detectives who’ve done it. Maybe they’re desperate to close a case. Maybe they know suspect X is guilty of many things that won’t stick, so they arrest him for one that might. It’s extremely rare, but it does happen. The reasoning is that we aren’t throwing someone in jail for a crime they didn’t commit. Okay, yes, we are—they’ll be in jail pending an initial hearing and longer if they can’t make bail—but the cops who do this ignore that technicality. The point, to them, is that it’s up to the prosecutor to make a case, and if the person is innocent, then they have nothing to worry about. Forget the lives you destroy, the prosecution jobs you endanger, the taxpayer money you waste—at least you cleared a case.
I actually consider doing the same. Not clearing a case but shifting the responsibility. If I can make Phil seem like a viable suspect, that puts this mess on the council. He’s their guy. They left him here. Give them Phil, make them handle the fallout, and then quietly find the real killer on my own.
If I did that, though, I’d be throwing Phil to the wolves. No, he’d have a better chance of survival if I threw him to actual wolves. At best, he’ll lose his job. At worst … Well, I know what “worst” is, and therefore I don’t do more than briefly consider the possibility. I will, however, investigate Phil as a serious suspect, more than I planned to.
The realization that Garcia was a real marshal is also enough to have me ready to slap my laptop shut and walk away. Screw finding the killer. Does it actually matter now? The USMS is our real concern now. I should stop working and go find Dalton and tell him what I’ve found.
Except I don’t know where to find Dalton. I’m safely ensconced at this busy coffee shop, and he’s out doing whatever, so he has the cell phone. I can’t contact him. I can’t track him. I must continue my work, which is really what I ought to be doing anyway.
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I have arranged the remainder of my list in order of answering ease. When it comes to researching suspects, it’s not really about priority. The issue is the likelihood that I’ll fall down the research rabbit hole, that I’ll find my answers and then chase them for more information, satisfying mere curiosity after I get what I came for. So the suspects who interest me the most go to the bottom of the list. Start with the ones where I’m just double-checking data.
Paul comes first. Dalton has already said he found his case online, and so do I, when I use the real name Dalton gave me. It went exactly as Paul said—during a protest, he beat an FBI agent. Witnesses said he mistook the agent for a rival protester, and there was an altercation, and the outcome was that beating, which led to a hospital stay for non-life-threatening injuries. A federal warrant has been out on him since the incident, which took place four years ago. I skim one article. It’s accompanied by a photograph taken during the protest and, yep, it looks like Paul.
I attempt to research Petra next. While I might be more curious about her than anyone on my list, I have little expectation of finding answers. Dalton’s given me the name she applied under, and he’s had no reason to research her story, so he’s never tested it. I do now, and as expected, it seems to be fake. I have a list of keywords to search using her first or last name. I know she was a comic-book artist. I know she’s been married. I know she had a child who died young.