by Linda Berry
“Good weather for catching up on paperwork at the lab,” the doctor said. “Which is exactly what I was doing, very happily, fortified by hot tea.” The business of death rarely ruffled him, which brought a measure of calm to the gruesome task of dealing with dead bodies. He and Wong had been processing the remains of citizens in the tri-town area for two decades.
“You’ll be headed over to the village later?” the doctor asked.
“Yep. Last time I was out there, a call came in about a brawl in the bar. When I got there, all was calm. A guy with a swollen eye said he ran into the proverbial door. The place was packed with witnesses but no one saw a thing.
“They don’t trust cops,” Stewart said.
“You need to get in good with Elahan. Then everyone else accepts you,” Linthrope said.
“The medicine woman? You know her?”
“She’s an old friend.”
“Really? Didn’t see that coming. She’s an herbalist, right?”
“An alchemist, really. Can treat just about anything. Makes a special ointment for stiff joints. Stinks to high heaven. But it works. I used to drive out there to pick it up, but now Tommy makes home deliveries.”
“Tommy’s her son?”
“Grandson. Sits on the tribal council. Teaches at the high school. Good man.”
“They say he’s a healer.”
“Not sure I believe in that mumbo jumbo. Sick people generally get better just by letting nature take its course.”
“Or by the power of suggestion,” Stewart said.
“Exactly,” Linthrope said. “The placebo effect.”
“I like his tea,” Stewart added.
“What kind of tea?” Sidney asked.
“Relaxation tea. Takes the edge off. Helps me sleep.”
“Sounds like they have a regular pharmacy,” Sidney said.
“Pretty much,” the doctor said. “No chemicals. Just medicinal plants.”
“I could use some extra sleep myself,” Sidney said. “What’s in the tea?”
“Valerian, hops, mulungu, ashwagandha, catnip, skullcap,” Stewart said. “And secret sauce.”
“Ha. Haven’t heard of half of that stuff.”
“It’s not bad. Give it a try.”
No way, she thought. Sounded about as appetizing as cod liver oil.
When the road disappeared and became indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape, Sidney parked behind the rescue truck. Everyone exited. The blast of icy air hit her face like a slap. She turned up her collar and pulled her knit hat lower over her ears. Ponderosa pines towered at their backs and swirling snow quickly dusted their shoulders.
The three firemen, who Sidney knew well, were bulked up in snow clothes, their breath smoking as they set to work. The snowmobiles were ready to go in record time. Years of practice. Skiers and hikers routinely got stranded in high country this time of year, and most would be doomed if not for these seasoned professionals.
Donning helmets, Linthrope, and Wong took their places in the seats behind two of the firemen. The third had a sled hitched behind his machine to transport the body. Sidney drove the fourth, which glided effortlessly over the snow at the rear of the column. After a fifteen-minute trek, the forest opened to a wide meadow and they parked by the old timbered bridge that crossed Whilamut Creek. Sidney remembered riding horses out here when she was a teenager, but it was unrecognizable under rolling mounds of white. The storm had eased up and the sun was trying to burn though a hazy sky.
Everyone started stamping their feet and moving their arms to get their circulation going.
There was no sign of Granger. Then she saw a figure emerging from the forest, head swathed in knit cap and scarf. The team watched expectantly as he approached, trudging through snow midway to his knees.
“You all right?” Sidney asked.
“Yeah,” he said, lowering the scarf.
“Warm enough?” Captain Jack Harrison asked with a touch of humor. The leader of rescue team, his gaunt face was ruddy with cold, but his voice was energetic, matching his personality.
“I did calisthenics. Got overheated, if anything.”
“Good. I wasn’t looking forward to resuscitating you.”
Everyone chuckled.
“Tommy picked up Selena?” Sidney asked.
“Yeah.”
“How is she?”
He frowned. “Shaken up.”
Sidney sensed his concern and shared it. But Selena was physically safe. That’s what mattered. She shifted her thoughts to business. “Did Tommy know the victim?”
He nodded. “Nikah Tamanos. She lived in the village with an abusive boyfriend. They asked him to leave and he moved into town.”
Bad blood there. In most homicides, a spouse or close friend was the primary suspect.
“Where’s the body?” Stewart Wong asked, looking impatient.
“Over here.” Granger led them to the bank and two of the firemen carefully descended. Everyone else gathered on the rise, silently watching. Snow cover was brushed away.
The woman’s body was revealed, trapped in a few inches of surface ice. Her black hair and a red scarf rippled beneath her in the swirling water.
A hollow feeling filled Sidney’s stomach. She was struck by how young the victim was, no more than eighteen or nineteen. Her brown eyes were glazed with ice, but she had beautiful features; prominent cheekbones, a full mouth, lips slightly parted as though whispering a prayer. Red marks encircling her throat suggested she had been strangled. Her left arm was bent, hand pressed against the ice, the other at her side.
“So young,” Granger said. He hid his emotions well, but he couldn’t hide them from Sidney. His eyes softened and she could see a subtle tick in his strong jaw.
“I don’t think we’ll need the chainsaw,” Captain Harrison said. “The ice isn’t that thick. Pick axes should do it.”
The men got their tools and went to work, the snow squeaking beneath their boots. They spoke through the logistics of freeing the body, voices neutral as they carefully chipped away at the ice. Stewart took photos from every angle, the clicking of his camera adding an oddly mechanical tone to the sound of rushing water and splintering ice.
Wishing she’d had the foresight to wear long johns under her wool pants, Sidney moved her feet from side to side. The frigid air stung her eyes and made her nose drip. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and swiped her nose while studying the surrounding area—snow, ice, water—looking for anything out of the ordinary. It was futile. Snow covered everything.
As though reading her thoughts, Granger said, “Nothing much to go on. I searched around before this new snow fell. Any evidence is buried.”
“Hopefully, her body will tell us a story,” Sidney said.
“We may be in luck,” Dr. Linthrope added. “The ice may have kept evidence from washing away.”
It didn’t take long to free the victim. The men lifted out the frozen corpse, as unyielding as a statue carved in marble. Dr. Linthrope gave the woman a rudimentary perusal, but until the body thawed, there would be no autopsy. He gave them a nod, and the men zipped Nikah in a body bag with her frozen hand poking up like a tent pole, then covered the bag with a tarp and secured it to the rescue sled.
“How long before we get postmortem results?” Sidney asked Linthrope.
“Depends. It appears only the upper half of her body is frozen. It has to be defrosted slowly in a refrigeration unit at a steady thirty-eight degrees, which can take a day or two. Go any faster, and the outside of the body will start to decompose, while the inner organs may still be frozen.”
Sidney’s gut twisted with disappointment. Their investigation would have to proceed without lab results. That made Sidney’s job more difficult. No way to check for DNA, signs of sexual assault, or the presence of drugs or poison in the body.
“What about an estimate of time of death?” Granger asked.
“Again, depends on how frozen she is. It takes about three days for
a human to freeze solid, so I’d guess she’s been in the creek at least twenty-four hours.”
The group disassembled quickly at that point, snowmobiles kicking out a spray of snow as they turned back the way they came, leaving Sidney and Granger behind to drive the remaining snowmobile to the village.
Granger hesitated before climbing onto the passenger seat. “Chief, if you don’t mind a suggestion…”
“Sure. Shoot.”
“The best way to approach the people in the village is to go to Elahan first and pay our respects.” He jammed his gloved hands into his pockets. His breath was white vapor. “She’s an elder. Everyone looks up to her.”
“Is that the custom?” Sidney stamped her feet, trying to get blood moving.
“Pretty much. With her blessing, the other folks will be more cooperative.” He gave her a thin smile. “Not willingly, but a little more receptive.”
Sidney had no problem relinquishing leadership to one of her three junior officers when appropriate. After eight months on the job, working under her wing, Granger had adopted her methods of dealing with the public. Half the job was instinctual and he could think two steps ahead in a crisis situation, skills honed from his combat experience. “Why don’t you take the lead on this.”
“Will do, Chief.”
The dull grey light changed to a deep leaden gloom as dusk descended. Swollen black clouds were racing in from the west. Soon darkness would complicate their travel through the woods. They needed to move quickly.
“While I drive, get on the phone to dispatch. Have Darnell and Amanda meet us at Tommy’s. We need to canvass the whole village.”
“That’s two dozen households, Chief.”
“Don’t I know it.” Her other two officers would arrive at Tommy’s within the half hour. She pulled her helmet down over her knit cap. “Hop on. Let’s roll.”
CHAPTER SIX
MOST EVENINGS, Tegan sat at the table doing homework, his fingers tracking the pages of books in Braille. Elahan normally occupied herself in the kitchen making bread and stews, or she helped his dad prepare remedies, measuring teaspoons of dried medicinal plants into plastic bags. The fragrance of sage, wild ginger, rosemary, and other herbs perfumed their hair and skin for the rest of the evening. Elahan labeled each bag by hand, peering through thick glasses that made her eyes look enormous, like an owl. The finished packets were placed in boxes, ready for his father’s deliveries.
Tonight, Selena and his father sat at the table talking and drinking tea. Tegan couldn’t concentrate. The shock of Nikah’s murder overwhelmed his senses. He felt so finely tuned he could hear the melody of blood moving through his veins, the percussion of his heartbeat. Keeping his face immobile, hiding his feelings, was exhausting.
Tegan retreated to the living room and sat cross-legged in front of the fire, absorbing the heat. Tears pricked his eyes as memories of Nikah bloomed in his mind. She had always been quick to laugh, ever ready to tease him. He knew intimately the contours of her body, the feel of her hand holding his. Sitting in her lap when he was a toddler, she held him close, and her lilting, musical voice sang him to sleep. He remembered her round, pretty face, nut-brown eyes shaped like almonds, and skin that felt like silk. Nikah had the most beautiful hair Tegan had ever seen. When she loosened it from its single braid, it fell to her waist like a glossy veil. What he remembered most, what haunted him, was her smell—the fragrance of grass and leaves and herbs that clung to her clothes and misted around her like a halo.
Tegan’s throat was closing up and he made harsh noises as he cleared it. Boys don’t cry.
Before tears streamed down his face, he had to leave. “I’m going to check on Lelou,” he announced, already wrestling into his parka.
“Okay, Son. Don’t be long.”
Elahan came out of the kitchen, as silent as a cat, but he could feel her power, her eyes studying him. He felt a muscle twitch near his mouth, betraying him. She knew he had secrets and dangers swirling around him. Elahan could read his deepest feelings as though transcribed in words on his skin. He would be shielded from her prying eyes in his safe place—the barn. With the animals who never judged him.
Forgoing gloves and hat, he stepped out on the porch gripping his walking staff. The icy breeze assailed him, cooling his flushed face and fingering his hair. He listened to the stirrings of the night, the noise of trees, the wind sighing across the sky. A certain energetic quality to the air told him it was the night of a full moon. His stick barely skimmed the surface as his internal GPS guided him in the direction of the looming structure. The sound and texture beneath his feet told him an inch of new snow had fallen since they arrived home with Selena.
A comforting cocktail of odors reached his nostrils as he entered the barn: old musty wood, sweet hay, horseflesh, oiled leather, and Lelou. Lelou bounded over to Tegan with happy growls, slurping his face with a huge, wet tongue, wagging tail beating the air.
“Okay, Lelou. Enough. Down.”
They both stood quietly, listening. Lelou remained at attention near the door as Tegan made his security check, entering each of the two stalls housing Granger’s horses, and running his hands over their bodies, confirming they were calm and settled. Then he approached the family’s only horse, Gracie. Her rich scent and warm anatomy were familiar and comforting. The appaloosa mare provided Tegan with comradeship and long rambles through the forest, with Lelou trotting behind. He stroked Gracie’s strong, sleek neck, and she neighed sweetly and gently nibbled his jacket collar.
Tegan settled in the fourth stall on a mattress of hay and the wolf arranged the upper half of his body across his lap like a huge puppy. Lelou made him laugh out loud. He laughed until his eyes welled with tears, and then he sobbed. The tears overflowed and streamed down his cheeks, his fingers tangled in the wolf’s thick fur. Lelou accompanied his moans with sorrowful whines and a harmony of intense suffering filled the barn. When his last sob had been exhausted, Tegan leaned his head against the worn wood and fell into a sleep haze. Perhaps he slept. Often times his waking hours and his dream world seemed to coexist. He could see neither light nor shadow, just a world of consummate blackness with no alteration.
When he lay all those weeks in a medicated haze recovering from his burns, memories of a ghostly man ebbed and flowed through his mind. The man appeared at the lake moments after the powerful electrical currents ravaged his body. Tegan collapsed, floating on a river of agony. The man’s strong arms gently lifted and carried him from the dock to the shore. Then the wolf appeared and began to howl—sharp, piercing, primal howls—setting off an urgent alarm that bought his father running. Tegan remembered nothing more.
A blur of pain, fitful sleep, and distorted fragments of consciousness followed his return home and weeks of recovery. His father was a constant presence, anchored at his bedside, sleeping on the floor, reading to him from books, infusing the air with the incense of healing herbs, his voice twilling chants like water cascading over rocks in a stream. Intermingled were memories of Elahan laying chamomile compresses over his eyes. Her rough-skinned, bony hands soothed his pain with ointments from bottles warmed in the sun. The earthy smell of the wolf was a constant beneath his window, and the faint smell of cedar smoke, which belonged to the ghostly man, ebbed and flowed. Tegan told no one of his dreams. The ghost, real or imagined, was his friend, his savior.
Since that day the scent of cedar smoke accompanied Tegan in the woods. The footsteps of the silent man remained close, his gait as long and easy and majestic as a cougar.
Awakening from sleep with a heaviness caused by remembered dreams, Tegan heard the soft rustle of animals and then he sensed, rather than heard the approach of the familiar footsteps, the long, quiet gait.
The man entered the stall. He leaned back on his heels and sat crouching, so close Tegan could smell the flavor of his breath. He could also smell his garments—worn deer leather and rabbit and raccoon and the feathers of birds. He pictured him as a mix of Sitting Bull and
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe. The wolf lifted himself from Tegan’s body and stretched between them, his tail thumping steadily in the dust.
The man rarely spoke when they were in the woods, and then sparingly, and only to instruct Tegan in their dangerous and secret work, so he was surprised when the man began speaking in a soft, husky voice. “The wolf has served you well.”
“Yeah, he has.” Tegan reached out and stroked the animal’s massive head. “Thank you for giving him to me.”
“He is not mine to give. Lelou is here by his own choosing.” The man was silent for a moment and then he continued. “I know you are sad about Nikah. I am also sad.”
The boy was not surprised that he knew Nikah was dead. She, too, had a pact of secrecy with the man. How often they met and what they did without Tegan, he did not know, but Nikah had once advised Tegan not to ask. The less he knew, the less he was involved, the better. One question burned inside him that he wished he had asked her. Tegan often wondered if the man was flesh and blood, or if he existed in a different dimension and moved in and out of the physical world at will.
“There are those in this world who have no qualms about killing people, animals,” the man said with an edge to his voice. “They are devils who wear human skin. They must be rooted out and killed, if necessary. You and I will bring Nikah justice. This I promise.” He let the weight of his alarming words settle into Tegan’s mind like heavy iron anchors. “But first you must tell me what you know about her killer.”
Tegan struggled with a tangled nest of feelings, tightly knotted, that he didn’t want to unknot. He felt running tremors in his belly. His fear was not only for himself but for Elahan and his father. The wrong decision could put them all in danger. The thought gave him a small, sharp pain in his heart. “I’m not sure what I know. How to put it into words.”
“I hear in your voice that you are frightened. There is no shame in that. Life is not safe. Nothing can make it so—nice clothes, a big house, a room full of guns, a mountain of money.” The man’s stroked the wolf in a long, slow rhythm. “You are afraid, yes, but your heart is still beating. Still fighting. You are a brave boy. You come from a long history of warriors.” A long moment of silence stretched between them. “Fear is real, Tegan. But you must not let it control you. When you are ready, we will talk more of this.”