Roberta nodded. “Okay, we use everything we can including them. I’m good with the clandestine stuff, I’ve done it myself, so I need to talk to them. Can you arrange that?”
“We’ve got a meeting place out of the way. We meet mornings when we need to in a quiet, wooded area. I can set one up for tomorrow.”
“Good, let’s do that. We keep them in the loop as much as we can, and we use what they get. Do they understand the limits?”
“They know they can’t be at crime scenes, can’t be seen to be part of this, but they get our reports and we get theirs. We fill in with the meetings,” Alan said.
Spence leaned on the seat in front of her and said conspiratorially to Roberta, “Something you should know. The pair of them will drive you nuts with their screwy remarks. They sound like airheads. And that girl, Sabina, she’s gonna bug you a bit. Something about her, I don’t know. Maybe you will, being a profiler and all.”
XIX
Dina was still groggy and her head hurt. She didn’t move for a while, then as she became more aware, she moved parts of herself and found them functional. She did that quietly, slowly, making as little sound as possible. Wherever she was, it was darker than the night had been.
She remembered a car engine, the scratchy sound the tires made on the dirt road. She remembered movement behind her, more a disturbance than movement. She remembered starting to turn toward it and a sharp pain, incredibly sharp. And then nothing. Until now.
She smelled earth, musty and damp. Beneath her, she felt something fine and gritty. Sand, she thought. It was under her hands, under her hips and legs, and she realized suddenly that she was naked. That, more than anything else, unnerved her.
Dina listened for a long time. There were no city sounds, no sounds of the forest or the sea, nothing at all except the sound of her own breathing. She knew then that she was underground, somewhere sealed. Her heart began racing, her breathing fast and shallow. She held her breath to control it, to calm down.
She moved slowly to get her feet under her. She stayed low and extended her arms, feeling for walls or ceiling. Slowly, she took tentative steps. Her hand touched a wall not eight feet away, the soil dampish and root-filled. She felt her way around the enclosure. More dirt, roots, walls. She could see nothing. She could only feel. Her head throbbed.
She sank to her hands and knees and explored the floor, finding nothing but the grit. She dug her fingers in at various places, trying to understand what the surface might be. It was more than six inches deep and under it there appeared to be stone, not pavers, not cement, not blocks, real stone. Bedrock. The gritty sand filled in the unevenness.
Dina stood straighter and reached up. She felt nothing. She stood on her toes, reaching. When she jumped a little, her hand hit something, something that dropped bits in her hair and on her face. She fingered it, and knew it was dried bark. She jumped again and again, feeling with the flat of her hands. She was touching a lid, she thought, a thick one made of logs. This was a trap like the ones her people used to make, but with a heavier top.
Dina found a corner and slid into a sitting position. She had no way out. The panic began to rise, her breathing rapid again. Whoever had put her here would be back.
She scrabbled across the sand floor again, searching for something, anything. She felt the walls again slowly, in by inch. She traced her fingers lightly across the dirt from the bottom up as far as she could reach.
Just past a corner, near the bottom of the dirt wall, she felt a stone. She dug around it, her fingers aching. She dug in further, released, and dug in some more. She tried to jiggle it, her nails now splitting. Eventually she freed it.
It was rounded but long, shaped like a baking potato. Slowly, Dina moved around her cave looking for a corner that seemed less dense, less solid. Reaching high, she began to dig, using the stone to strike the wall of dirt as hard as she could.
She felt winded and couldn’t feel any progress. The work was hard and discouraging, but she had to keep digging. She had to. She couldn’t just sit there.
Under one of the tree roots, her rock struck something solid. She felt around the area and then hit it again. She hit it repeatedly, obsessed and totally focussed. Exhausted, she reached up with both hands. She dug around the end and tried to work it loose. Her fingers bleeding now, she used the stone again, back and forth. Fingers then stone.
Suddenly the rock gave way. It fell against her and knocked her to the floor. Her ribs were aching where it had rolled off. She searched for it, lifted it up, and felt it. It was a fragment splintered off the mother rock by the tree roots, and it had a much sharper end. But that meant that there was a mother rock close by. If there was, she might never dig herself out.
Dina now had the hole the new rock had left, and she had a superior tool. She had made progress. No time for despair.
She used the earth piled up around her feet as a step. She was both frenzied and hopeful, and soon she had a bigger step so that her arms no longer needed to be above her head. She dug harder.
She found no rock face. Instead, she found roots, so many roots, and she could not get through them. She shifted her efforts down the wall trying to break away from the impenetrable mesh. She dug up, earth splattering her face, in her eyes and mouth. She closed both and dug.
A large chunk of earth fell suddenly, knocking her off her dirt steps to the sandy floor. Slowly she got up, brushing her face and hair. She could see. There was light. It flowed down the hole from the small cave-in and threw pale light down the wall. She could smell air and felt the current. She stood and dug. More dirt cascaded down, then more fell, then she saw green. The green limbs of trees exposed by early morning light.
Dina worked feverishly enlarging the hole. She could see her way out now, and nothing would stop her. She dug and dug. Finally, as more dirt fell in, she climbed out.
Dina felt the cool air on her and breathed deeply. She heard only the breeze soughing through the giant firs and the call of birds. She was in heavy forest. She looked around carefully.
On the side she faced, there was only bush and the marks the logs had made in the ferns and salal as they’d been hauled along to make the roof of her prison. On the other, however, there was a log house she could see through the trees.
She stood and began to move into the trees away from the house. The farther Dina ran, the more she realized her predicament. She was naked and exposed, and her feet needed covering. She couldn’t possibly keep running through the woods on bare feet. As she ran, she looked for a dead giant. She needed cedar bark.
She saw an old tree some hundred yards away and made for it. She stripped the bark in narrow strips, carefully, so it wouldn’t show easily. Then she bound it to her feet. It would do for a while. She continued running.
◆◆◆
Harry was in the kitchen making coffee when Sabina wandered in. She was still in a towel, hair wet, feet bare. She smiled. “Coffee, wonderful. I need some.”
As he poured, the phone rang. He picked up. “Hello, it’s early so don’t yell or I’ll spill my coffee.”
“Your donuts are getting stale and you have a meeting with the dicks at the sanctuary in an hour. Drink fast and tell the other one to wear something decent, they’re bringing someone for you to meet.”
Harry turned to Sabina, phone still in hand.
“Izzy. She’s got donuts and we’ve got a meeting. Oh, she said wear something decent. Not that you don’t, of course. You better drive.”
Ten minutes later, with Sabina dressed in a knee-length skirt, they headed for the car parked around the corner by the hair salon.
“Jesus, H, you look less than glamorous today. What’s with the grey shirt? What happened to that nice taupe one I got you? Oh yeah, I remember, spaghetti sauce. I’ll get you another one.”
She reversed slowly enough, but once on asphalt, she gunned it for twenty feet, hitting the brakes momentarily at the corner. Then she took a sharp left and floored it down Stewart. Once a
cross the bridge, she took the turn up Comox to Wallace and hung a left at the light. She sped down to the crescent and pulled into the lot across from the office.
“You got twenty minutes. Coffee’s fresh, donuts old, and your mail’s on the desk. I sent the two cases you should be doing to Will with instructions from the clients. You should give him your salary and take his, be about right for what you two do.”
Isabella swung around and hit the keyboard again, ignoring the pair of them. Harry shoved Sabina into the office and closed the door. “She’s in a good mood. We’re lucky. Let’s grab some coffee and the nuts and get out of here before that changes. She’s got more storm fronts than the Pacific.”
As they got ready to leave, Isabella called. “You read the profiler’s report yet? I left it on your desk yesterday. Looks like it’s still there.”
“I read it, don’t understand it, but I read it. Maybe that’s who we’re meeting and she can explain it to me.”
“Fill the thermos and grab the donuts. I just gotta get some papers and we’re out of here. I’ll explain it to you on the way.”
Isabella listened to their chatter and the pounding of their feet on the stairs and shook her head.
The drive to the sanctuary was fast. Sabina was coming up on River Road when she checked the rear view and saw the grey SUV for the second time.
“We got a tail, Sweets, so hang on. She floored the company’s new black Hyundai Santa Fe, made a few turns, and sped up Jinglepot. They went across the bypass and scooted up College Heights. At the top of the hill, she took the dirt road used by students to park illegally down near the cloverleaf, and halfway down the hill, slipped into the bush on a side trail just wide enough to miss the trees. It had rained a little in the night, so there were no dust trails. Sabina stared at the rear-view mirror and watched the SUV roar by on the drive.
“Okay, lost the bugger. Let’s boogie.”
She reversed and took the dirt track down to the bypass, wallowed through the ditch, bounced up onto the drive, and took the bypass to the south end. She worked her way to River Road.
“I wonder who that was. That ever-cheerful reporter, you think? Or maybe somebody more sinister, like the perp himself? Ooh, gives me shivers just thinking about it.”
She grinned at Harry and gunned the car under the overpass and into the sanctuary parking lot. At the far end sat the unmarked. Standing beside it drinking coffee were three people, Alan, Spence, and a taller woman. Sabina pulled in beside them, slipped off her heels, and put on a pair of flats she kept in the car.
Harry nodded. “Alan, Spence.” He raised his eyebrows
“Harry, Sabina, this is Roberta Cannon, a criminal behaviour analyst with the department,” Alan said.
“The profiler,” Sabina said and stuck out her hand.
Roberta shook it and Harry’s. “Let’s walk a bit, take one of those tables in the clearing.”
Harry brought the box of donuts, the paper cups, and the thermos. Roberta chose the farthest picnic table from the trailhead and they sat. She focused on Sabina.
“You’re the IT guy, right?”
Sabina smiled and nodded. “I do all that stuff, yeah, got my papers and everything.”
Harry watched them. So did Spence.
Roberta remained still for a moment or two, then relaxed. She smiled at Sabina and nodded. “Right then, have you got your data with you?”
Sabina held up a flash drive, wiggled it about, and handed it over. “That’s everything we got so far, including the stuff from Chinatown on the second girl, Mary. Be nice if we could see your profile.”
Harry was about to speak until Sabina kicked him under the table. Roberta grinned at her and shrugged. “Don’t see why not. I’ve got a hard copy here or I can send it to you.”
“Hard copy’d be good. Give it to Harry, he’s the lead.”
“You guys have some donuts to go with your coffee while I read this thing. I’m fast, so by the time you finish, I’ll be up to date.” He flipped through the paper copy quickly and handed it to Sabina.
“As you’ve heard,” Alan said, “we just got another one missing. And we’re presuming that she’s in the hands of our killer or killers. What we need is for you two to canvas the stroll again, see if you can get anything out of the girls. They’re used to you.”
“He’s not escalating, and he should be,” Roberta said. “We’re looking for a pretty controlled guy, a careful planner. He won’t make mistakes, he thinks, but he’s already made a few. We know his preferred ground, we know his methods, and we know his rituals. We know he has a partner, I’m certain of it. If we can get a sighting from the girls, we’ll have a better idea of how he manages the abductions. The old truck is nowhere to be found, so he probably has new wheels.”
“We can do that.” Harry took a final sip of coffee, grimaced, and continued. “Sabina has a contact she can use. So have I. If there’s anything there, we’ll find it.”
Spence shook her head. “We’re narrowin’ our search a little. We know roughly where he lives and it’s close, maybe even in town somewhere, close to his huntin’ ground, at least Roberta thinks so. And geographic profiling has narrowed it to a range that includes the city.”
“Maybe this will help.” Sabina looked at Roberta. “We were followed on the way here, grey SUV of some sort. We lost him up on College Drive, so we made sure we were clear before we came here. Might be the guy, but then again it might be a reporter. Maybe that Martin guy who creeps me out.”
“Martin drives a pickup, so you can rule him out. Could be our guy though. Maybe he is losin’ it a bit.” Spence looked at Alan, who shrugged.
“I don’t know. Spence is right. Martin doesn’t have an SUV. You didn’t get a look at the driver?”
“Too busy getting rid of him. Didn’t get the plate either. Mid-sized, though, tinted windows too, and not too old. Good driver, but I lost him.”
Alan slapped his knees. “Okay, let’s get going. You two hit the stroll, and we’ll work our end.”
At the cars, Roberta took Sabina aside for a moment. Harry waited at the car. Alan ignored them, and Spence shook her head and muttered. “Jesus, she’s bad enough. Now she’s got the damn profiler interested. Gonna have to watch both of them.”
Eventually, they all climbed into their vehicles and took off, Sabina up River Road, Spence down to the city.
“What was that all about?” Spence asked Roberta.
“I just wanted to make sure she understood her function here. She’s an expert in IT, so we need to use her that way.”
Spence let it go and drove.
◆◆◆
Sabina took River Road all the way across to the south bridge over the Mist River, took the cloverleaf, and ran down to Ladysmith. She parked in front of Tiny’s, a special place she and Harry liked.
They looked out the restaurant window across the harbour and into the Salish Sea. They could see the outlines of the Coast Mountains, atmospheric haze making them indistinct, like the chiaroscuro marking on old drawings. The light, even this early, was diffused, softening the foreground, leaving an impression of colour and shape. The whole scene possessed a muted stillness that was soothing.
They sat that way drinking imported Kona coffee, the real stuff, absorbed by the scene in the window.
“So how do you want to handle this little assignment?” she asked. “We gonna wait ‘til tonight and do something else today, like work, or you wanna hit the strip now, see who’s up?”
“Better be tonight, give our girls a chance to get up and out. On the way in, I’ll check if Gloria’s doing early morning rounds. By the way, what was that about with the profiler when we left?”
“She’s a switch hitter, Sweets. Like me, only the other direction. She picked it up fast. She’s got Spence pegged too.” Sabina grinned at him.
Harry scratched his head. “Who would have thought? Roberta and you! Well, I never, as my gran used to say. You want dessert?”
“Je
sus, H, we just had donuts an hour ago, and I like you slim and virile just the way you are. Let’s hit the road. We got stuff to do.”
Sabina drove to the office and went in. Harry changed seats and drove a grid looking for Gloria around the alley and up by the park. He didn’t find her, so he went to the office, nodded to Isabella, and started on a couple of new cases she’d booked that morning.
The first one was more Sabina’s than his, a matter of electronic pilfering, so he passed it to her. The second was another surveillance job and should go to Rory and Will, so he patched through and handed it over. Will would see the client and take it from there. That left him with two surveillance reports to write up so the clients could be billed. After he dropped off the finished work to Isabella, who’d send out the invoices and reports and file their copy, he sat at his desk thinking about the third girl, the waitress from the Modern, the one they both liked so much.
She had something, that girl. She was sure noticeable; sort of what Mary was like, only in a quieter way. That had to be what got to this guy, or guys if Roberta was right. That quality, a kind of sensual perfume like with Dina, or an upfront come-and-get-it blatant appeal like Mary, or even a frustrated sexual itch like Kylie. That had to be the key. They all had that sort of thing going on one way or another. He could understand how the psycho might be hypersensitive to that kinds of sexual innuendo. His motivation to do them in, complete with weird rituals and markings, rather than just use and discard, was something nobody seemed to understand. Not even the vaunted profiler.
Harry got up, fished out the files on the girls, spread the crime scene photos on his desk along with family photos where there were any, and tried to read backward from them.
So he abducts them from the stroll or close by, at night or maybe even early morning because Kylie wasn’t on the stroll, they didn’t think. But she could have left Sandy’s after midnight, say one or two in the morning. He keeps them quiet; there didn’t seem to be any struggle going on with either of them. No defensive wounds they could find. Drugs maybe? Something to put them out really fast. Maybe chloroform? Then what? Take them somewhere private, somewhere in the woods? Close to where we find them? Probably not. Too far out and the sites were miles apart, so maybe somewhere here in the city? He’s got transport, he’s got a hunting ground, he’s got help, he’s got a safe spot somewhere, and he follows strict rituals each time. We know his early experiments, a few anyway, at the church. He started with animals, he’s super controlled, he’s not escalating, and he looks for that sensual quality in the girls. The sensual thing has to be strong to attract him. So that’s the trigger.
NIGHT MOVES: The Stroll Murders Page 26