Adrenaline hummed into Callie’s veins as she regarded Mason. She pushed suddenly to her feet and reached for her jacket, which she’d removed inside the warm van. “I wonder what the cargo was—contraband?”
“Probably drugs,” Oskar offered as he shrugged into his own jacket. They followed her out into the wind, where Callie called her team together for the briefing.
THE SEARCH
MASON
Mason watched Callie as she efficiently and expeditiously answered a few questions from the group after her briefing. This woman was sure of herself, and comfortable in her role as a leader. Callie Sutton had a command presence any cop would envy. Mason’s attention shifted to the group of volunteers standing in the rain. The oldest person on the team looked to be in his late fifties, maybe even early sixties. The youngest was a woman around nineteen. Rugged mountain people. Mason had worked all his life with tough, gritty sorts, but this was a different kind of tough. These were folk you’d want on your side if you got lost, or if you needed assistance far away from any trappings of civilization. People who relied on themselves, and not technology.
“Keep an eye out for any signs of oil or gas slicks on water,” Callie told her team as they stood with water rolling down their jackets and dripping from the bills of their caps. “And look for other signs along the riverbanks that seem out of the ordinary. Remain suspicious.” She paused, meeting the eyes of each and every person on her team. “There is no such thing as coincidence on a search, and nothing should be considered too small or too inconsequential to collect, report, and record. There’s always a chance that something seemingly unconnected could later become key evidence as the overall picture emerges.” Her gaze touched Mason’s. “So far, it appears this aircraft was flying without proper authorization, and we have no indication yet what the cargo might have been, or if there was in fact any. Evidence should be collected with a view that this could become a criminal investigation.” She paused. “Any more questions?”
Heads shook.
“Okay, let’s do this,” Callie said. “And everyone—be safe out there.”
As the SAR volunteers grouped into teams and began to deploy, the passenger door of Callie’s truck swung open. Mason’s attention was attracted by movement. A small, humanoid, green-haired creature in a long purple coat jumped down from the truck into the mud. Every molecule in Mason’s body froze.
He watched the young boy run through the sleet toward the KSAR command vehicle. Part of his brain was saying, It’s Callie’s son.
Another part of his mind was seeing straight down a tunnel into a Halloween past. A Halloween two years back. Luke. Wearing the same Joker suit. Jenny had bought it for him at a Walmart sale one Halloween when it seemed like every second kid in their neighborhood had gotten the same off-the-rack outfit. Blood drained from his head. Sound around him turned into a buzz.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and swung around to look directly into Callie’s eyes.
“Sergeant? You okay?”
He shook himself back to the present. “Fine. I . . . I’ll be in my vehicle if you need me. I need to . . . brief Hubble.”
He strode rapidly back to his truck, feeling Callie’s gaze boring into his back. His heart raced. It had been a brutal shock. Something completely unexpected. But little Ben Sutton was almost the same age his Luke had been. Same size, coloring. Mason sure as hell hadn’t thought his ghosts would follow him out here, not like this.
Mason climbed into his truck and started the engine to warm the interior. He called Hubble on his sat phone.
“Sir?” Hubb said. “You find something?”
“Search is just getting underway. I need you to contact the serious crime unit at the RCMP North District headquarters in Prince George, brief them on the status to date, and stand by for additional details as they come in.”
“You think it was carrying contraband?”
“It’s a possibility until we rule it out.” Drugs moving up north through vast wilderness areas was an issue, and a challenge for northern cops. “Keep them apprised—it could end up intersecting with one of their files.”
“Affirm. I’ll call back if they offer any new information from their end.”
He signed off. He hadn’t really needed to call Hubb. But he had needed to feel he was being more than a spare part out here. Through his window he watched Callie talking to Ben outside the SAR van. Ben appeared to be arguing with his mom. Mason’s window fogged up as his car warmed and water evaporated from his gear. He wiped away the fog to keep watching. Callie crouched down into the mud and drew Ben close, hugging him tightly. The little green-wigged head rested briefly against his mom’s shoulder, and she covered it with her gloved hand. Rain beat down over them. The poignancy of the vignette stabbed sharply through Mason’s heart.
It made him feel suddenly close to Jenny.
He could almost feel her presence beside him in his truck—so much so that it was painful. Another memory surfaced in faded color like an old photograph—the three of them at Christmas. Their last Christmas as a family. An ache washed through him. Visceral. It came from low in his gut and ballooned painfully into his chest. Who knew grief could be so goddamned physical, a dark and sly trickster that blindsided you when you weren’t even thinking about loss, and suddenly you couldn’t get it out of your mind again. A thump sounded on his roof, and a wad of slush slid down his windshield. The forest outside seemed to darken, fingers of mist curling around his truck. It was eerie. Haunting. Unfriendly. He inhaled deeply and checked his watch. There wasn’t going to be much for him to do out here in the woods but wait now. And he was reluctant to go sit inside the command vehicle with Callie and Ben.
He wondered again if it had been a weirdly bad decision to take this post and stick himself out here in the wild mountains, far from everything familiar. A cold prison of sorts, one from which he couldn’t escape for two years minimum, not if he wanted to keep working as a cop. Sometimes he wasn’t sure that he did. Sometimes he wasn’t even certain he wanted to live.
Callie took Ben inside the van. Mist sneaked back over Mason’s windows. He sat in his fogged-up cocoon and forced himself to call to mind the deceased pilot’s upside-down face, the milky dead eyes staring sightlessly back at him. The registration markings in bold black on the fuselage. He had recalled them correctly, hadn’t he? They’d been upside down, but he’d always possessed an uncanny ability to remember sequences of numbers and letters. Was he losing his mind?
Time ticked by. He checked his watch again.
A sat call came in from Hubb. She told him Prince George had nothing in connection with the downed plane on its files.
Again, he pictured the upside-down wreck. The pontoons in the air, the wings crushed. The pilot hanging in her seat harness, mouth gaping open.
He decided to go back to the SAR van and check progress with Callie. But as he opened his truck door, Callie came barreling out of the back of the van, carrying a helmet in one hand and pulling her jacket hood up over her cap with the other. She hurried over to Mason’s vehicle.
“They found it!” she called as he got out of his truck. “The K9 team. They found the wreck in the shallow end of the large pool in our highest-POD area.” Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright with excitement. “Oskar and the rope guys have managed to hook on to it. They’re winching it out right now. Come.” She thrust the helmet at him. “I can get us into the pools via ATV. You’ll need to drive your own—I’ve got no one to leave Benny with. He has to come.”
Ben exited the van dwarfed in a borrowed and oversize KSAR jacket. His wig had been exchanged for a helmet, and his arms looked overly long with adult gloves dangling on the ends. Comical was the word that slammed into Mason. And touching. Ben scurried after his mother, who was making for two quads parked in mud behind the SAR van. Mason followed, trying to recall when he’d last driven a four-wheeler. Mostly relief pulsed hot in his veins. They’d found the wreck. And fast. Thank God. It absolved him
of his stupidity. Somewhat.
“You do know how to drive one, right?” Callie asked as she helped Ben up onto one of the quads.
“Yeah.” He straddled the seat and started the engine. It coughed to life under him in a nice throaty growl. He pulled on the helmet.
Callie donned her own helmet and climbed onto her seat. Ben, sitting behind his mom, wrapped his arms tightly around her. She started her engine, made a call on her radio, and was off into the woods.
Mason followed along the twisting trail. It snaked and climbed through the trees. Callie set a fast clip. It took all of Mason’s focus to just keep pace and remain upright. But twenty minutes into the ride, he got the feel, and Mason felt a punch of exhilaration, something akin to freedom. This focus on the trail, this speed, this novelty had—just for a few moments—afforded him a means of outrunning his ghosts.
Maybe Kluhane Bay wasn’t going to be such a bad decision after all.
They crested a ridge, and Callie slowed. He followed suit. Going at a moderate pace now, Callie started down a steep and slippery incline. She paused once to check over her shoulder to see how Mason was doing. He gave her a gloved thumbs-up. She proceeded down the trail.
Suddenly, through the gaps in the trees, through the shifting curtains of clouds, he glimpsed the river pools below, and he heard the roaring sound of the falls upriver. He stopped his quad. For a second he just took it in. It was stunning. Wild and utterly, rawly beautiful. In the mist, along the edge of the top pool, he saw the bright-red jackets of the KSAR techs working with ropes and a pulley system to drag the wreck out of the water.
He followed Callie down to join them.
They parked on the trail a short distance away. Ben remained on the ATV. Mason and Callie removed their helmets and climbed farther down the steep slope to the rocks along the water.
As they reached the rocks, the wreck broke the surface. The guys hauled it, creaking and groaning, onto a flat rock ledge. The aircraft had lost both pontoons, and the wings were more damaged than before, and the fuselage was crushed on one side.
Oskar waded into the shallow water and peered inside to look at the pilot. His body went still. Callie and Mason moved into the shallows to see more. Oskar straightened. He turned to Mason, not Callie. His face was white.
“You need to see this, Sergeant.”
Mason waded out farther into the icy shallows. He removed his flashlight from his duty belt and bent to look into the dark shadows inside the crushed cockpit. The pilot was still strapped in. But her face had been gashed and torn. A feeling of sickness washed into Mason’s throat. He’d done this by sending her over the falls. Her head hung at a different and awkward angle. He ran his beam over her. Then he saw it. The knife.
His heart kicked.
He leaned in closer.
“Shit,” he whispered.
The knife stuck out of the pilot’s neck on the right side. Stabbed in to the hilt. From how the blade was positioned, Mason guessed it would have severed her carotid instantly. Next to the blade was another entry wound, bloodless, diamond-shaped, gaping open. It appeared that whoever had done this might have taken two plunges with the blade. The first perhaps tentative, or missing its mark, the second likely fatal. This pilot would have bled out within minutes. His brain reeled. Could she have been stabbed up in the air? Was this what had brought the Beaver down? What of the assailant, then?
“It looks like a Schrade,” Callie said quietly.
He hadn’t noticed her come up to his side.
“A what?”
“A Schrade. An old hunting knife. People call it ‘the Sharpfinger’ because of the aggressive, hooked tip on the blade. It’s vintage—see those leather washers in alternating browns around the handle?” She reached in and pointed. “And there’s oxidization on the blade, just below the guard there. It’s made of carbon steel, which develops that nice patina. Stainless steel is newer and doesn’t do that.”
He shot her a hard look. “Nice patina?”
“My father was a collector. I have his collection still.”
“I need your team to stand back, Callie. This is now a homicide investigation.”
THE LODGE PARTY
MONICA
Sunday, October 25.
Monica allowed Deborah to lean heavily on her and Nathan as they helped the woman limp up the path from the dock. Monica felt for her. Not only was the lake cold, the shallows into which Deborah had fallen were brackish, slimy, and full of reeds. A rank smell emanated from her sodden clothes, and her hair and face were plastered with fine mud and vegetal detritus.
They moved slowly through the drumming rain because the overgrown path that led up to the lodge was muddy and also slippery. Brambles full of dead leaves covered the cleared area around the lodge, and mushrooms and moss sprouted from everywhere—this place didn’t get much sun.
An odd place to build, thought Monica, here in the dank fungi-infested shadows of the tombstone mountain.
Beyond the bramble patches, the trees closed in. From the aerial view they’d just been afforded, the surrounding forests were endless over impassable mountain ranges that stretched forever. Branches swayed in the wind, and the forest creaked and moaned. Thick fingers of mist sifted around the lodge. The building was big. Two stories. Constructed of giant logs that had weathered over the years. A row of dirty windows upstairs watched their approach like cataract-hazed eyes.
As they neared the totem poles, Monica glanced up.
Moss and lichen crept up the totems. Atop one of the raven’s wooden wings, a live crow perched like a judge in black robes. She glanced at Nathan, saw that he was studying the totems, too. His face was tight. Her husband looked as scared as she felt right now. This thought sent an odd punch of resentment through Monica. She wanted Nathan to fix this. To be more capable. To save her like a knight in shining armor. On some level she knew, deep down, that she wished Nathan would impress Steven. She wanted Steven to be jealous of Nathan, not condescending toward him. The sad fact of Monica’s life was that while her husband adored her, he sometimes embarrassed her just by being himself. She felt this reflected badly on her own image, that she should’ve been capable of attracting a more alpha male as her partner in life, that people took her less seriously because she’d married Professor Mushroom, who was losing his hair and going soft around his belly.
The crow suddenly spread its wings and swooped away, a dark shadow in the rain. It vanished into the thick clouds rolling down the granite mountain.
She glanced back over her shoulder to see if Stella and Jackie were still arguing. But Stella had climbed inside the plane and was now handing bags down to Jackie, who was passing them to Steven to carry to the end of the dock.
“They’re fetching our bags from the plane,” Monica told Deborah. “We’ll have you cleaned up and into some dry clothes in no time. And Steve can take a look at your ankle. He’s a doctor—I’m sure he’ll be able to help.”
“So it’s Steve now?” Nathan said over Deborah’s head. “Not Steven?”
Monica shot him a hot look of warning.
A noise sounded in the forest, a crack, then a sharp rustle. They all stopped in unison and stared into the shadows.
The forest around them stirred and whispered. Monica’s heart beat faster. The woods appeared sentient, displeased with their arrival. Nathan liked to think of trees in this anthropomorphic way. He liked to remind her how they were all connected belowground by a mycelium network, an information highway whereby they could talk to each other, warn each other of pending danger, or death, or looming disease. It gave Monica the creeps. So much so that she resisted accompanying Nathan whenever he invited her on one of his mushroom forages through the woods near their house. He’d managed to make the woods feel malevolent to her.
“What was that?” Deborah whispered, eyes wide.
Monica squinted into the darkness between the trunks. She thought she saw something dark weaving through the trees, then it was gone.
“Probably just the wind,” she said crisply. “Come, let’s see if we can get inside that lodge.”
Steven came stomping up the path behind them carrying two bags. “I’ll see if it’s open.” He went past them.
“What if someone is in there?” Deborah called after him.
“Then they can light us a fire and make us some supper,” he yelled without looking back. “But I doubt it—looks like it’s been deserted for years.”
He clumped up the wide stairs and onto the landing in front of the door beneath the antlers.
Nathan lowered his voice. “What in the hell is he doing here anyway?”
“You heard Amanda,” Monica said curtly. “He was invited to assess the place for potential, like we were.”
“It’s weird.”
“It’s not my fault, okay? Stop acting like it’s my fault, that I invited him. I had no idea.”
Deborah began shivering hard against Monica’s body.
“I didn’t say it was your fault,” he hissed over Deborah’s head. “I said it’s weird, as in, it’s a strange coincidence that he’s here.”
“A coincidence that Steven runs a cosmetic surgery clinic? And I run an organic food outlet with a catering arm? Both of ours are top-of-the-line businesses, Nathan. What’s so strange about the fact that we should both be invited to tender for a high-end contract? You’re overreacting.”
“You know what’s fucking strange, Monica, is that clearly this is not about a high-end contract. That”—he pointed to the hulking black building—“is most definitely not the luxurious Forest Shadow Wilderness Resort & Spa. It was fucking weird to begin with—the idea that cosmetic surgery patients would want to travel this far to ‘recuperate.’ If you ask me, Dr. Steven should have thought so himself. Unless he’s up to something.”
She met her husband’s eyes and began to understand his fear.
Their conversation from last night echoed in her brain.
“I know Bart Kundera from somewhere, but can’t recall where,” Nathan said. “I don’t have a good feeling about it.”
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