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“Or serious snooping. But it’s my laptop, kept at home, off the internet. I shouldn’t have needed more.”
“If Denise hired someone to hack it…”
“It would take more than some kid who’s good at computers, but she works in IT. She has connections. I just never expected—” He swallows the rest with a hard shake of his head. “She’d had enough. I knew that, and I was telling myself we’d work it out when I got back. Last time we talked, she wanted to come outand stay for a week, prove she could do it. I said we’d try that next year.”
Because this year, he’d found gold, and he might have loved his wife, but he didn’t trust her to understand the importance of keeping that a secret. So she hacked his laptop, found his three potential locations, and came out to show him she could survive a week in the woods.
Only she never got that chance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
We have identified our mystery woman. We have notified her next of kin. So, what happens next? That’s where it gets tricky. If we turn Denise’s body over to Mark, he’s going to realize those knife wounds are not from a wilderness accident. We could forewarn him, but then he might bring in the Mounties, and our town would be in jeopardy. We are prepared for that. We must be, as Rockton was. If we are exposed, Émilie says she’ll handle it. Apparently, Rockton did not survive for seventy years without a single government official ever realizing there is an entire town illegally built in the Yukon wilderness. It was handled. It can be handled again. Yet we certainly don’t want to deal with that before we’ve even opened our doors.
Here, though, we can use Mark’s own paranoia about his claim. He sure as hell doesn’t want to call in the RCMP when he’s illegally mining. With us, he has an alternative. We will investigate. We will figure out what happened to Denise, and he can take it from there. There is no other next-of-kin. Her mother is dead, and Denise had no children and little contact with her father. With Émilie’s help, this can be handled in away that allows Mark to lay his wife to rest without the authorities getting involved. That is what he wants, and we will give it to him, because it is to our advantage to do so.
I question Mark further while sidestepping any mention of his mine or its legality. That keeps him on safe ground, and he tells us what he can. Once I’m done, he heads back to his camp, leaving his wife’s body with us, where we will continue storing it in the permafrost level to ward off decomposition.
We’re back in town now. I’ve been making notes while Dalton holds the town meeting to present the new timetable. I’ve resisted the urge to join them. He’s got this, and I need to focus on my investigation.
When Dalton is done there, he joins Anders in helping out with the construction for a couple of hours. Then both join me for dinner in the town hall.
“I think Bruno or his partner—or both—were at Mark’s camp that night,” I say. “They knew he was gone, and they were checking it out.”
“And triggered one of the traps?” Anders asks.
“Possibly? But that can’t have been the first time they were there. They should have known about the triggers, and the one set off was on the tent, which they’d have no reason to enter. That leads into the question of why Denise was half naked when she was killed.”
“Surprising Mark,” Dalton says. “She gets there while he’s out. Figures he’ll be back soon because it’s getting dark. Goes into the tent, setting off that trigger. Gets partly undressed for a sexy welcome.”
I nod. “He’s going to be angry with her for hacking his files.”
“But a lot less angry after hot reunion sex.”
“Distraction and mollification,” I say. “But instead, Bruno or his partner show up. Denise goes out. There’s an altercation thatturns violent. Mark asked what personal belongings I found with the body. I had to get creative with that, to explainwhyshe didn’t have anything with her if I think it was likely an accident. But it did give me an opportunity to ask whether she would be armed—does she carry a gun or whatnot. He says she has a pocketknife. It was a gift from her first husband before he died of cancer. An in-joke about needing to take care of herself after he was gone. She carries it everywhere.”
“Could that be the murder weapon? She confronts whoever is in her husband’s camp and they turn it on her?”
“I’m going to have April examine the body and see if we can come up with a blade size. I also want her to reexamine Bruno for defensive wounds.”
“Yeah,” Anders says. “We did fingernail scrapings for you, but that’s it.”
“I have a theory, then, one that ties Denise to the rest of it. Now I need evidence.”
After dinner, the guys continue to help with the build while I take over as April’s medical assistant for examining Denise and Bruno. The knife wounds on Denise are consistent with a pocketknife blade. It could be any pocketknife, but also, tearing around the edges suggests the blade was not exactly razor sharp. These were thrusting wounds rather than slicing ones. That would match a pocketknife someone might carry for self-defense in situations where they are almost certainly never going to need to do more than wave it around. It’s not as if Denise would have been sharpening it before heading into the urban jungle to buy groceries.
I’d examined her earlier for defensive wounds and found a cut on her hand that suggested she fought. But it does not provide any link to her assailant. No tissue under her nails. No foreign hairs on her clothing. If she did manage to stab her killer, any blood on their skin was either washed off or smeared together with her own blood, and while I can test for blood type, it all comes back to O positive, which is also hers.
On to Bruno then. We know he wasn’t stabbed, but now we’re looking for even a jab or prick, something that suggests Denise got in a blow with her pocketknife. There’s none of that on his body. No defensive wounds either.
“I want to check his clothing,” I say as April begins to cover Bruno’s body.
“It’s where you left it.”
“No, I want to check it against his body.”
She frowns at me.
“Just don’t cover him up yet,” I say. “Can you help me put a sheet on the floor and move him onto it?”
