Watcher in the Woods (Rockton #4)(81)
Yet Dawson also serves as a supply town. It’s the second biggest city in the Yukon, clocking in at a whopping fourteen hundred souls. This time of year, it’s bursting with tourists but also miners, of the professional and amateur variety. Last month, I met a miner who looked like he walked straight out of the Klondike, with a grizzled long beard and fewer teeth than fingers—he was also missing a few of the latter. On the trip before that, I met a university professor from California with a doctorate in geology, who’d been bitten by the gold bug as a child and returned every summer, finding just enough to justify the trip.
We arrive at the airport, which is fifteen kilometers outside town. It is the smallest airport I’ve ever seen. There’s no baggage carousel—they push your luggage through a trap door into the tiny terminal. We land, and Dalton checks in and gets our car. Dalton hasn’t arrived with a flight plan. Most of the air traffic is little bush planes like ours trucking people in and out of the wilderness. Dalton radios with plenty of notice, and when he does that, if it’s a controller he knows, he can have the car summoned and waiting when we arrive.
There are no taxis in Dawson. No car rentals. No buses. There’s a “guy,” who the council apparently pays well enough to come at a moment’s notice, bringing a vehicle and then finding his own way home.
After checking in, Dalton chats with one of the ground crew, an older guy who’s known Dalton for years. Dalton’s asking if anyone took an inordinate amount of interest in either our last departure or 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 a good mining or trapping or hunting. At the airport, Dalton is unfailingly polite and friendly enough. 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 suspects 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 clothing. He got the call. He came. He followed.
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 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 only get the woman’s voice mail. April has told me to impersonate her, and I do. I keep the call short and business-like. 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 e-mail me, but my vacation was also an internet sabbatical. That means I have limited access to my e-mail and none to my cell phone, which is why I’m calling from this number.
I text a similar message to her research assistant and a colleague. That’s it. Before April came to Rockton, she’d placed one call, presumably a personal one—she’d made the business notifications by e-mail 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 in 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 cafe 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 cafe, with locally roasted coffee, homemade baked goods, comfortable seating, and most importantly, free wifi. 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.