Northern Lights: A Due South Novel

Chapter 4: At the Rusty Nickel

After the memorial, the crowd moved to The Rusty Nickel, the only bar in town. The Rusty Nickel was precisely the sort of bar one expected to find in the Yukon. Century-old log walls still bore the soot of a wood-burning fireplace and generations of cigarettes. A stuffed moose head hung above the stone fireplace, while antique snowshoes, skis, and saws graced the walls. Instead of landscapes, the bar displayed photographs of the local pond hockey league through the decades, going back to the days of leather shin pads and wool sweaters. Only a weak, late afternoon sunlight entered through the small windows in the thick walls.

Friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances crowded the room, their chatter rising to a cacophony. Regulars who refused to let a private party impede their evening drink sat at the bar, still wearing their parkas and boots. Most of them knew Tamara or her family, and those still sober enough offered their condolences when one came near. Bob McKenzie, the bartender, was too busy slinging beers to nod at the Frasers as they entered. The red serge caught the eye of an engineer and the BMW driver, whose hands were shaking as he downed a pint.

Elizabeth passed several miners to make her way to the back of the room, where Tamara's relatives had set up a photo display. Tamara as a baby, riding in a carrier on her mother's back. Tamara as a toddler in regalia at a festival. Tamara in front of their house in Whitehorse, dressed for her first day of school. Tamara's RCMP portrait was there, but in the bottom corner. Her University of Northern British Columbia graduation portrait filled the centre, twice the size of any other photo. In the portrait, Tamara held an eagle feather and beaded purse instead of the traditional bouquet.

Elizabeth opened her folio and removed a photograph of the two friends in front of Virginia Falls. The picture had been taken during a canoe trip two summers earlier, when Elizabeth and Tamara had paddled the Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories. Dressed in their hiking pants and sweaters, they smiled in triumph. They had just completed the portage around the falls, which roared behind them. The vast cataract was three hundred feet high and over eight hundred feet wide—longer than four hockey rinks placed end to end. On either side, steep canyon walls rose higher than the falls themselves. In the middle, the pyramid of Mason's Rock vainly attempted to hold back the flood.

A few moments after the photograph, Elizabeth and Tamara had slipped on the mist-dampened rocks and landed on their backs. Fortunately, they had only injured their dignity.

Elizabeth handed the picture to Tamara's grandmother Mary, who sat on a stool next to the memorial wall. When Tamara had joined the Frasers on their trips to Bear Falls to build the family cabin, Mary had driven up to the site every day after work. She claimed it was to gather berries and make sure her granddaughter ate a proper diet, but in truth she hadn't trusted the Frasers. Mary was the last in her family to attend a residential school. The Mounties had acted as truant officers, sometimes dragging children from their parents to attend the schools. Although her own children had attended the public day school in Bear Falls, Mary still feared when two Mounties and an American ex-detective—Benton Fraser, his half-sister Maggie McKenzie, and Maggie's husband Stanley Kowalski—arrived in town with her granddaughter. But Fraser won her over. He invited her to teach them a few words of Tutchone, then set up a chair and table for her to sit at each day while she sewed. When she accepted a cup of chamomile tea that he'd prepared, they knew he had succeeded.

Mary took the picture with both hands and taped it on the wall next to a picture of Tamara wrestling her younger brother in the snow.

"Oh my, what a lovely picture," gushed a young man from over her shoulder. The wide-eyed constable from the parking lot stood only inches away.

"You mean the falls, Constable Franklin?" Inspector Cartier's voice was gravelly and tight. Up close, she could see his red, watery eyes and nose. Around his left eye was a massive, fresh bruise covered, inexpertly, with makeup a few shades lighter than his skin. He cleared his throat. "I don't believe we've been introduced. I'm Inspector Jack Cartier, commander of the local detachment."