Read Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery for Free Online

rest. This all has to be done before the flight can go on. If you know anything at all, be sure you tell us now, not two days from now.”
    The two of us went back into the little airport office. The corporal sat behind a desk. There were two chairs. I took one. Through a window I could see the silently waiting 737, gusty snow visible against its lighted windows. Beyond it, snow and ice particles could be seen in the runway lights blowing thick and fast. Beyond that was blackness entire, the impenetrable Arctic night.
    A second constable was inside the aircraft. Having taken photos of the body from every angle he was supervising the cleanup.
    Whether the body stayed here or went on to Yellowknife had not been determined, but when we were finished here the inspector at Inuvik, commanding the big RCMP subdivision that included Inuvik, Norman Wells and other surrounding territory, would let us know.
    Just before the first person, the woman from the airline counter, came in, I asked the corporal, “Any word about that missing aircraft?”
    He looked at me as if I’d gone nuts, asking about a missing plane when we had a murder on our hands.
    The counter agent had streaky, fair hair and a very pale face. Before we even asked, she burst out, “There was a guy came in on the flight this morning that I didn’t know. A big guy. No luggage. I noticed him because he had one of those parka hoods that pretty near cover the face, and he went right out and took off in the taxi before anybody else left at all.”
    She said that waiting for the flight to come through tonight she was sure the guy she’d seen this morning hadn’t been around. There’d been no one in the terminal except the few boarding passengers, nobody who had asked any questions in person or by phone about the incoming flight and whether it had a stretcher case aboard. We quizzed her but that was all she knew. When we figured she’d told us everything we could find out right then, we started on the others.
    An Esso Resources guy said that the chain-link fence that fanned out from both ends of the terminal building ran along this edge of the airport to restrict access to loading and unloading areas. Several private concerns along the airport strip, Okanagan for one, also had to be entered through gates in the high fence. Theoretically no unauthorized person could get through one of those properties to where the murderer’s snowmobile had been parked, perhaps not for long. But the Esso guy also pointed out that the fence only ran along one side of the airport. Charlie obviously knew that. I had thought of that too. The other side, and the ends, were wide open. The man could have driven in unseen from the open bush and waited in the dark, watching the aircraft taxi in and then making his move.
    Through the rest of the questioning, I just sat and listened. The corporal was thorough and well-organized. The profile that emerged pretty well matched my own recollection from the few seconds I’d been aware of the murderer at all.
    The two baggage handlers, dressed for their frigid duties outdoors, had been getting their cart out to unload luggage when the man ran for the snowmobile and took off. The dark-haired stewardess who’d been closest to the action had a bruise on her right cheek from when she’d been flung out of the way but said nothing I did not already know. She said rather shakily that she’d been lucky to get off with a bruise, she might have been shot, too.
    A young Metis woman who’d been among the boarding passengers, with a ticket to Yellowknife, said she had seen the snowmobile move slowly up as the plane was taxiing in, but had thought nothing of it.
    Around seven the inspector in Inuvik called. The corporal filled him in and was told that the body should go on to Yellowknife when we were finished, and the nurse had better go, too, to be handy for questioning.
    When the thirty-second and last person had