The Beast in the Bone

by Blair Lindsay

  Nor would the police have thought, even then, about looking for a group of white-collar men in their thirties. Bikers ran in gangs and weren’t particular about the women they assaulted, but pedophiles and serial rapists tended to be loners.

  It seemed to Arcand that the men had discovered each other’s “tastes” in university. Maybe they’d committed assaults similar to Sophie’s, trolling hooker’s row and picking up the youngest thing they could find. Maybe at first they’d let all their victims go.

  At some point that had changed. Perhaps they realized that sooner or later one of the prostitutes they kidnapped might talk, somehow identify them. But they couldn’t kill them, could they? Edmonton police would eventually twig to the fact that there was a serial killer on the loose.

  Arcand had read Keller’s police statements about Oakes’s remarks on her skin colour. It put him in mind of the infamous “Highway of Tears.” Highway 16, particularly the seven-hundred-kilometre stretch of road that arced through northern British Columbia between Prince George and Prince Rupert, was so named because of the number of Indigenous women gone missing there.

  The area was remote, ill frequented, and surrounded by poverty-stricken towns and reserves whose residents often had to hitchhike to get from place to place. It would have been an opportune stalking ground for Hunt and his friends.

  And that wasn’t the only attraction. The soil in the forests surrounding Highway 16 was soft and porous. Easy to bury things in, if you had a mind. And if digging was too much trouble, well, the area was full of wolves and bears and smaller carnivores that could dismantle a corpse within hours.

  Had Hunt’s group travelled that deadly highway, picking up hitchhikers? It was a straight shot west of Edmonton. Arcand could imagine a van just like Sophie had described, dark-coloured and smelling of rust, rattling down that long hopeless road at night, the side door sliding open to engulf some luckless soul with her thumb out who would never see home again.

  But if Hunt and his friends had driven that road, it hadn’t been for long. Because in October 2003, Dennis J. Hunt’s father had a stroke during his morning bowel movement—Arcand had the ambulance care record—and passed away hours later. Every cent of the estate was suddenly in Dennis Hunt’s pocket. There’d been no more need for a van. Why dine out when you could get something delicious delivered?

  Herzog had gone on to teach history at the U of C but his own inheritance enabled him to contribute to such deliveries. Oakes’s family had gone bankrupt shortly after he flunked out of university, but he had the conveniently remote farm, along with the badge and uniform from the security company he worked for.

  And all these years later Hunt was poised to lead the country.

  Arcand could ruin him at this very moment. Two or three strokes of the keyboard and every media outlet in the country—hell, in the world—would have the exact same information Arcand had.

  But there was no fun in that.

  Arcand had enjoyed seeing Herzog realize who he was, and he was still savouring the memory of watching the other man gasp and choke on his own blood after the bullets ripped through his chest. It would be difficult to reach Hunt directly, he knew. But there were intermediaries, stepping stones, and he thought he had identified the one closest to Hunt.

  Arcand had finished disposing of every other implement or particle of clothing that might have tied him to Herzog’s murder, but he still had the gun.

  And the bolt cutters.

  Fifty

  October 10

  Keller lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling. How was it you could be so exhausted and yet sleep would not come? At midnight, no less. The coffee probably hadn’t helped, but…

  Is it that you can’t sleep or you’re afraid to sleep?

  Nightmares were lurking in the dark waters of unconsciousness, she knew. And witnessing Herzog’s excessive manicure might just stir the silt at the bottom of that lake, bring them up and calling on her.

  After two hours of no sleep she got up and pulled her running gear on, played ball toss with a clumsy, sleep-deprived Groot, and then they ran.

  It was pure idiocy. Most of their run occurred in pitch-blackness, but there were high-powered lights on her back porch and on the exterior of each of the outbuildings and she had done night runs around her field before. Groot was more than a match for any coyote but if he bugged out on her, there was the miniature can of bear spray she carried on her belt for jaunts like this, just in case.

  Yeah, you’re worried about coyotes.

  But she’d seen no further sign of anyone surreptitiously observing her, and though no paramedic was at heart an optimist, that should be cause for celebration, no? No. Her stalker might have decided to stake miniature cameras around her place.

  A good hit would fix this worry, and bonus, there’s that sleep thing which I’ve heard is pretty cool.

  She kept running until she hit ten kilometres, then stripped off her running clothes and sluiced herself in the shower until the hot water ran out.

  Just a taste. It doesn’t mean you’re back on it. Just a taste to keep the dreams away.

  What would it be tonight? Maybe the boy with the shattered head, his sightless eyes looking out from a face like a collapsed balloon. Or maybe the dead woman in the bathtub. It had been a long time since she’d made an appearance. Maybe it was her night.

  The woman in the bathtub had been in her mid-twenties, with a four-month-old baby girl… and epilepsy. Her husband had taken their three-year-old son out to run errands. After that had been a trip to Dairy Queen. The kid had been a good boy, after all.

  Three hours out of the house, maybe a little more.

  No one had been able to figure out afterward why the woman decided to take a bath alone that morning with her infant daughter.

  Dispatched to a “child not breathing,” Lang and Keller spilled out of the ambulance to hear the man’s keening screams from the street. They found him on his knees, tears mingling with sweat on his cheeks. His cellphone was shouldered to his ear as the dispatcher talked him through performing CPR on his drowned infant daughter. His three-year-old son was standing in the hallway looked bewildered, face red and raging with his own fearful screams.

  Backup was only seconds behind, so Lang settled bedside the hysterical man and the infant while Keller pelted upstairs to check on the wife. The man had pulled both his lifeless baby and his wife from the tub, but you can do CPR on only one person at once. Faced with an impossible choice, he’d left his wife on the bathroom floor and tried to breathe life back into the little girl she’d brought into the world.

  The crews worked both cardiac arrests on scene, throwing every drug they had at the problem, then raced to Rockyview Hospital, where the ER team continued resuscitation attempts long beyond any possible hope for success.

  All these years later, the man’s dilemma still haunted Keller. He’d made a choice no one should ever have to make, and in the end it wouldn’t have mattered, either way. Both mother and daughter were flatlined from the get-go, long dead well before the father came home to find them.

  When Keller entered the bathroom that day, the woman was lying naked on her back on the tile, surrounded by a wide puddle and a scattering of children’s toys. Her lifeless face stared up at nothing, her mouth wide open, pleading mutely for Keller to do something—anything—to undo this horror.

  In Keller’s dreams, the woman was still in the bath and underwater, mouth gaping open, soundlessly pleading for help. And the baby was alive, trapped beneath her mother’s body and struggling to get free, as Keller imagined she might have fought briefly that day to be born out of water a second time, before succumbing to hypoxia.

  In the nightmare Keller would try to free the child, to drag her out from under her dead mother, all while the woman stared at her. Endlessly, silently pleading. Keller never succeeded.

  Worse, sometimes even after she woke, drenched with sweat and heart pounding, the dream would not go away. The pleading woman
and the dying baby were now and Now and NOW… till sleep claimed her again, or she had another lick of that good old vitamin F.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, trembling with adrenal fatigue. One call to Glasgow and she could sleep, in sweet certainty of no dreams.

  No.

  But she could make a small concession. Up until now she’d been doing okay without sleeping pills but she still had a few zopiclone. When fentanyl wasn’t in her system, it sometimes helped.

  She found the bottle and downed one, then poured herself an exceedingly large glass of Pinot Grigio to wash it down—theoretically not Kosher with the zop, but better than what she really longed for.

  Better than, better than better than…

  “Fuck.” Was the rest of her life going to be sets of slightly less disastrous addictions that could nevertheless be charitably described as “better than narcotics”?

  She flopped back into her bed, found Colbert on TV, and sipped and watched, the overhead fan thrumming like a hummingbird—white noise that almost masked Groot’s snoring from his own bed in the corner. She made it nearly through the second glass of wine before sleep came for her.

  The nightmare came for her too.

  Not the one she feared, though. Not the boy with his head blown apart or the woman in the bathtub.

  A different one this time.

  Fifty-One

  In the jagged black bleakness of the nightmare, calloused hands were pressing down on Keller’s face and throat, smothering her.

  Thick, strong, man’s hands. She was on her back and her assailant was crouched above her, a nauseating stink of whiskey and body odour coming off him.

  She struggled, caught in that flux between awareness of the dream and the cloying inability to escape it.

  In the last moments before shaking herself awake, the hands spread to cover every inch of her mouth and nose, and she could no longer draw breath. She felt the thick, metallic pressure of a ring on one of the fingers pressing into her cheek, so hot she believed it would burn her.

  Awake, sweating, and tangled in the sheets, Keller rolled over in bed, hesitating before deciding against turning on the light. She had learned from her long battle with insomnia that if the light was on, her brain was on… and sleep was over. The bedside clock glared 0334. She rolled onto her back, hands clasped over her chest. Sometimes this position lured sleep back into her mind again.

  Not tonight.

  Her brain was sorting through the dream, trying to place it among the plethora of frightening nightmares the last few years had gifted her with. About an 80 percent fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com, she thought. With comments like “The suffocation scene really had me going but not enough dead people in this one” and “I’m not sure the complete inability to fight back rings true.”

  Rings true. Rings. Ring.

  The calloused hands against her face and the searing heat of the ring digging into her skin.

  She growled and rolled over, hand slapping against the bedside light.

  Groot groaned in confusion as the room illuminated.

  “You sleep all day every day, so don’t even, dickhead.”

  She groped for her phone and Decker’s card, both of which she’d dropped on the bedside table.

  Three rings and she was shunted to a recorded message. “Leave your name and number…”

  She hung up and redialled.

  Same again. “Leave your…”

  Persistent bitch, aren’t you?

  One of her preceptors, a burnout in every way, had said it to her after she refused to give up on convincing a homeless man, slumped in an alley, to come into their ambulance on a cold January night. Some things you don’t give up on.

  Plus, she knew most phones were defaulted to accept a third call from the same number, no matter what the time.

  “Decker.”

  Third time lucky.

  His voice was clogged with sleep. She took no small delight in it but her heart quickened. Was it Decker having that effect on her or just the sound of any human’s voice in post-nightmare loneliness?

  “It’s Ash.” She took a deep breath. “Ash Keller from—”

  “I haven’t forgotten you, Ash.” Sleepy amusement in his voice.

  Right. Not like most murder suspects were easily forgotten, especially if they had your number. Excepting of course it probably wasn’t Decker’s number, exactly. Likely he had burner phones and gave out new numbers as required to whoever was “suspect of the month” with the same subtle enticement he’d given her: “Call me if you need anything and we can talk.” Her father had told her many stories about suspects who called him, wanting to “help” in any way they could.

  You get what you ask for, murder cop.

  “Herzog’s ring,” she blurted out.

  “What?” Decker half slurred it. He had been well and truly asleep and Keller was halfway jealous. Another part of her wondered what it would be like to see him like this, hair mussed, caught by surprise and vulnerable, struggling in his bed sheets and groping for a bedside light. Was he naked, or…

  Focus, girl.

  “Herzog was wearing a ring.”

  “Okay…” Decker said. She could almost see him wiping at his face, trying to claw the sleep away.

  “Oakes was too.”

  Silence. Confusion.

  “Oakes was wearing the same ring.”

  “Okay…”

  Decker was still too sleepy, too confused. She had the advantage. A father who’d schooled her in puzzles, in addition to hours to turn this all over in her subconscious. She was certain.

  “Herzog and Oakes are connected.”

  Silence again. Was he going to hang up? Brush off the crazy, paranoid addict looking for recognition or salvation?

  “What are you doing up at this hour?”

  “Planning my next fiendish crime.”

  This got a sleepy laugh. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

  “Insomniac… Nights aren’t always my friend.”

  “Don’t get a lot of good ones myself,” he said, and Keller sensed the shadow of a rebuke. “You’re sure about this?”

  “I wouldn’t have called if I wasn’t. It’s some kind of college or class ring.”

  “A lot of those things look alike.”

  Heat rose in her chest. “These were the same. You check. Or don’t. You’re the one, told me to call.”

  “No offense meant,” he said. “I’ll check this out first thing in the morning.”

  She hesitated. “Look, if you’re brushing me off, just say so.”

  “Ash. I’ll check this out. First thing. And I appreciate your call.” She heard the forced professionalism in his voice, the distancing that cops did with civilians.

  “You appreciate it? Jesus, Decker…” Keller ran a hand through her snarled hair.

  “Look—”

  “Sorry I bothered you. Goodnight.”

  She ended the call, then snapped off the light and lay back in bed, taking long, slow breaths. Sleep would come eventually, if she gave it time.

  But of course sleep wasn’t really the problem.

  It was what waited there.

  Fifty-Two

  The Fixer hung up the phone and crawled from bed, glancing at the clock radio.

  0920. Wonderful. He was awake three hours ahead of the alarm he’d set. All thanks to Ash Keller somehow putting two and two together.

  The goddamn rings. Hunt should never have given Oakes one. “Part of the club.” The Fixer thought he’d taken care of that mistake, but Keller had put the puzzle pieces together despite her concussion. Why couldn’t she just let it go? But of course whoever killed Herzog dragged her back into it. Any normal person might have felt she’d escaped enough trouble for two lifetimes, might have kept her mouth shut and her head low. Not Keller, apparently.

  What rankled the Fixer so much about this was that he was going to have to call Kapp and tell him that he had been right. That Keller was a threat, would
need watching and maybe—once things had cooled down and everyone had forgotten about her again—more permanent measures.

  Fifty-Three

  The next time Keller woke it was to the soft thrum of rain. Memories of the previous twenty-four hours crashed around her mind like drunken partygoers. Muted light shone through the curtains and her bedside clock glared a judgmental 1323. Groot was still sleeping and she herself had slept a dreamless nine hours.

  Miracle of miracles.

  No headache, so that was good. That meant she hadn’t drunk all the wine in the house. Which means there’s some for tonight was the yin to that yang. Her quads were burning, but the post-run pain was well earned and inconsequential. Running was the only hurt in the world that only ever left her feeling better.

  So… tackle the morning.

  Groot was looking up at her, worried inquiry in his expression. Had the human forgotten he must have food? She pulled on clothes and let the dog out, taking in the soft, soothing wash of the rain falling for a moment before pouring a liberal amount of kibble in his bowl.

  Keller’s turn. There were energy drinks in the fridge for the mornings when she was too lazy to make coffee and she grabbed one now and collapsed back into bed, thumbing the TV remote.

  National news. A rally for Dennis Hunt in Winnipeg the evening before had attracted protesters holding signs with crossed-out swastikas, who clashed with others waving placards saying Traditional Canadian Values and Keep Canada Canadian. It was surreal. She’d been so consumed with her own trouble these last few months she hadn’t realized the country was in some kind of upheaval.

  The news correspondent caught her up. Apparently, the Liberal government had spent the last year fumbling everything from healthcare to defence, and the previous week a new scandal involving political pressure on the justice minister had enveloped the Prime Minister’s Office. There had been resignations—none of them quiet. Barring a miracle, the Liberals would fall in the next election.