He’d been watching them work.
“I didn’t see you,” Cam said.
“I was stalking the big male adlak who lives in this valley.” Tooly smiled—only one of his teeth looked even vaguely white. “The adlak was stalking you.” He stared at Cam without blinking.
“Black bear,” Daniel interpreted, moving to her side.
A primitive shiver ran down her spine. “Black bears don’t stalk humans.” The old man was trying to scare her.
“They don’t? Then I must be mistaken.” Polished jet eyes twinkled. “Perhaps they only eat ugly old men who fall in the river.”
“You saw that?”
“I saw the helicopter arrive and I knew the old man would be taken care of.” He narrowed his eyes and scowled at Daniel. “You scared my damn bear miles away.”
“He’ll be back,” Daniel said. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his aviation specs, but his mouth looked grim as he turned to face her. “What do you have for bear protection?”
She sighed because he was only trying to help. “I carry pepper spray in my rucksack.”
“I’ll get you bear bangers,” Daniel said.
Bear bangers sounded pretty useful in the wilderness. “Thanks.” A gray jay darted between them and started pecking at a quarter that lay on the ground.
“The Doc needs some help catching live Arctic char,” Daniel explained and looked at his watch. “I don’t know what the going rate is, but I’m sure she’ll pay well if you agree to help her.”
Cam nodded. “I’ve got over a hundred radio transmitters I need to implant in the next two weeks and so far I haven’t caught a single fish big enough to tag.”
Tooly pursed his lips and touched his finger to his mouth. “So I get to help the mine company flood me out of my own valley?”
Cam opened her mouth in surprise. She hadn’t realized they were in the same watershed as Mitshishu Brook. Hadn’t realized the mine company would be displacing anyone when they dammed this remote area.
“I’m sorry.” She looked over this derelict land. Glittering water, large boulders and craggy spruce. She looked down the river valley at the blazing scenery that greeted this man every day of his life.
Shame filled her for having judged him for eking out an existence by hunting. She sometimes sacrificed fish to science. Which was more valid? He was part of this ecosystem and she was just passing through, but in the process his life would be destroyed.
“We shouldn’t have come.” She backed away.
“I will help you,” Tooly told her and bent down to pick up a bowl of scraps—presumably the dogs’ breakfast.
“Why would you help me?” Cam asked.
“The people have a saying. ‘The caribou feeds the wolf, but it is the wolf who keeps the caribou strong.’” Tooly looked up at the sky and smiled with his terrible teeth. “And I need to eat, lady.”
***
It was very early, but Griff sat on an uncomfortable straight-back chair in Sylvie Watson’s parents’ dining room. The curtains were drawn and a little boy sat alone in the living room watching cartoons, colorful images from the TV flickering across the wall.
Mary and Charlie Watson stood in the open-plan kitchen, both talking on the phone in some guttural language Griff didn’t understand.
“They’re speaking Inuttut. The Labrador version of the Inuit language.” Constable McCoy kept her voice to a whisper.
“You understand what they’re saying?”
“Not really, sorry, sir.” She shook her head. “But I think they’re talking to the AngajukKâk—the mayor.”
The Watsons lived in a modest, well-kept home that backed onto the forest. Through the living room doorway, Griff saw pictures of other children and grandchildren. He recognized Sylvie as a schoolgirl, smiling shyly into the camera. A life of addiction had aged her face with cruelness and without pity.
“They have other kids?” Griff asked McCoy.
“Yes.” She leaned closer. “Three, but the others are much older than Sylvie.”
“I need to talk to them if they live in town.”
She noted his request down in her small notepad.
Griff glanced over at Charlie Watson and wondered how his own kids were doing. Part of him wanted to get home, grab them tight and never let anything bad touch them. The rational part of his brain knew life didn’t work that way. At least Marcia was a stay-at-home mom and whatever else she might be, she was a great mother.
The couple got off the phone and turned to face them.
“Have you found out who did this to my daughter?” The lines in the old man’s face looked freshly dug.
The parents’ alibis had checked out, and one of the primary duties of a homicide detective was to not further traumatize the survivors. Griff took this part of the job very seriously. “I’m sorry, sir, we have no suspects at this time.”
Yesterday the local commander, Sergeant-in-Charge Percy Roblin, had escorted the Watsons to Goose Bay to formally identify their daughter’s body. That had to be the worst experience for a parent. Burying a child was bad enough, having one stolen from you was horrific.
Slippery ribbons of tears ran down the mother’s face and she went to sit on a chair in the corner of the room, curling over and into herself, saying over and over, “My baby, my baby, my baby.” She didn’t look as though she’d slept since she’d heard the news.
“We processed the scene, took fingerprints and sent all the evidence to the lab.” The ME had completed the autopsy before the family had identified the body.
“One of those miners killed Sylvie.” Charlie looked up and the hatred in his dark eyes was so intense, Griff braced against the weight. “I’m going to call a meeting with the local council and put a stop to the mining project.”
Griff cleared his throat. “You’re right to be upset, sir, and I cannot imagine what you are going through. But it is our job to apprehend the individual who your killed your daughter, and I promise you I will do everything in my power to do so.”
Charlie’s mouth crumpled on a sob.
“And, you’re right, it could be one of the miners from out of town who killed your daughter.” Griff held up his hand, palm out, trying to instill calmness in a world of outrageous grief. “But we know from experience that stranger killings are less common than people think, and I don’t want to jump to conclusions. I want to catch the man who did this, not arrest a convenient scapegoat just so everyone can sleep at night.”
“We’ve never had murder like this around here before.”
“I’m afraid your daughter was in a high-risk profession.” Griff watched Charlie’s fingers curl into a fist. “And her problems with alcohol and drugs might have compounded her vulnerability.” Griff walked to the window at the back of the house, opened the drapes to let in a little natural light. The Watsons blinked as if it hurt. “People kill for different reasons. Sex, greed, revenge. To keep someone quiet…”
Charlie’s eyes shimmered and he turned away. Mary Watson wiped her eyes and climbed unsteadily to her feet, moving to her husband’s side.
The despair ate at Griff’s composure. “Can you think of anyone who wanted to hurt your daughter, Mrs. Watson? Anyone with a grudge?”
She shook her head.
“How long before you get the DNA evidence back?” Charlie asked.
Every damn person knew about DNA these days. It made Griff’s job more difficult because the real world didn’t operate to fill a sixty-minute TV time slot.
“The labs are busy, it can take up to a year in some cases.”
“A year!” Charlie yelled. “Is it money you need?” The man went to the sideboard and pulled out his checkbook, holding Griff’s gaze as he wrote a blank check. He ripped it out and thrust it at him.
McCoy’s eyes flickered but she found her poker face. She straightened her shoulders and settled her hand on her equipment belt.
“It isn’t about money, Mr. Watson,” Griff replied gently. “The labs are back
ed up. I have put a priority notice on this.” And he’d done that for personal reasons rather than professional, which made him feel like a real prize. He wanted to solve this murder and go home to his own family.
Charlie’s silence was defiant and his fingers trembled. How would Griff feel if his daughter was murdered and someone said it would take a year to run the tests? He’d move heaven and hell to catch the bastard, and damn the consequences. Unfortunately, Sylvie Watson’s murder wasn’t the only crime being investigated, and the lab only had so many resources. Prostitute murders generally rated with gang-bangers and drug dealers. Griff hadn’t created the system. He was just a small cog in a cranky old machine, and all he could do was his job.
“Did Sylvie have any close friends or boyfriends?”
Mary shook her head. “She knows everybody in town but most of her school friends moved away or settled down and got married. The only people she spent time with…well, when she was sober…were us and her son.”
McCoy and Griff exchanged a glance. “And she lived here?”
Charlie squeezed his eyes shut but a single tear leaked down his cheek. “I converted the garage into an apartment for her.”
“She brought her clients back there?” McCoy asked.
“She wasn’t a prostitute!” Charlie yelled so loud the little boy in the other room scuttled through to grab hold of his grandma.
Shit. Griff glared at McCoy for her lack of tact, although it was a question that needed to be asked.
Mary picked up the boy, rocking him soothingly. “Yes, but only if she was so intoxicated she didn’t know better.” Her voice broke. “Lately, we started keeping Zach in the house with us because…”
Because they hadn’t wanted anything bad to happen to him.
But they’d failed their daughter. He could see the thought in their eyes. And it was ripping them apart.
“Do you know who her clients were? Do you know who Zach’s father is?” Griff wasn’t comfortable talking in front of the young boy, who clung to his grandma like a koala. “Maybe we should go to the detachment, for privacy.” He nodded to the child.
“No.” Mary shushed and stroked the kid’s hair. “He’s due a nap, he’s tired.” She shot her husband a look and jiggled the toddler on her hip. “Charlie doesn’t want to hear it, but most of the men in this town used our daughter for…you know what.” Mary’s eyes were both fierce and lost. “But Zach was a gift from God.” She kissed the boy’s jet-black hair.
“Perhaps we could run a DNA test?” Griff suggested. It might give them more information, maybe a motive, and it might provide some closure for Sylvie’s parents if they knew who’d fathered the child.
“No.” Mary hugged the boy fiercely and he squirmed. “He’s all we have left of Sylvie. I’m not losing him too.”
She thought the father might take the boy away from them, and he might. Griff nodded, unable to argue about the rights of the father when these people were barely functioning. For now.
“Can we see her apartment?” Constable McCoy asked.
“Why?” Charlie seemed to gain some control over his emotions and turned back to face them. “She was murdered in Frenchmans Bight, not here.”
Mary covered the little boy’s ears and rattled off what sounded to Griff like an ass-kicking for talking about murder in front of the kid. It seemed a little late for propriety.
Charlie’s shoulders hunched like an old man’s. He walked over to a rack behind the kitchen door and grabbed a set of keys. “Here.” He tossed them and McCoy caught them.
“Sylvie made mistakes. If you gave her a choice between doing something easy or something hard, she would always choose the easy way.” His thick brows lowered and his eyes glittered with tears. A shimmer of something feral moved over his face—a father’s anguish, raw and defiant, but something else too, rage. “I know to you she’s just another dead prostitute, but she was my baby. Promise me you’ll find her killer so we can put our baby to rest. Promise me, because if you don’t find him, I will.”
Chapter Eight
Make Peace or Die 1st Battalion, 5th Marines
Daniel dropped the fish team off at the mouth of Mitshishu Brook for Day Two of their operation. Tooly was taking his ATV and would meet them there. Daniel had struck up a friendship with the old trapper when he’d first spotted the cabin from the air and gone down to investigate. He fetched the old guy supplies and slipped in the occasional bottle of whisky, appreciating just how hard it must be to live in the wilderness.
Now he was late.
The sun reflected off the sea like titanium rainbows as Daniel pulled on the collective, speeding toward the slinging site. It had been a successful morning, worth being a few minutes behind schedule. He’d gotten someone to babysit the Doc and maybe get her out of Labrador faster, which suited him fine. Call him chauvinist or prejudiced, but he didn’t think a diabetic should be let loose in this wilderness.
He squinted at the sun’s reflection off the water. Sweat beaded his brow and his mouth was parched from dehydration. He felt like crap. Was it booze? Or lack of sleep? Or leftover nightmares from his old life that just wouldn’t quit? Or maybe the ghost of a woman who had been ruthlessly murdered?
His gut knotted. Sylvie had been nice enough, an easygoing alcoholic. Keeping her legs together hadn’t been a priority, but none of the men around Nain had complained, and he was hardly the model of abstinence. She hadn’t done anything to deserve a blade across the jugular. Her kid certainly hadn’t deserved to be an orphan at such a young age. He was a black-eyed, black-haired little tyke, and reminded Daniel of another child halfway around the world…
Emotion swelled in his throat, threatening to choke off his airway as he raced over the water, stripping the breeze. Memories burst through his mind. Heat, dust and sweat. The taste of gunpowder so thick on his tongue he almost gagged. The recoil of the gun against the palm of his hand.
The self-disgust that had reared up when he’d admitted to the cops he’d had sex with Sylvie reminded him vividly of his final interview with the Commanding Officer of the Regiment. The brass had let him take the fall for doing what he’d been trained to do. But he’d made them do it. He’d forced their hand because he wasn’t worthy of that beige beret or flaming-sword cap badge.
The reporter he’d risked his life to save had obtained inside information on the hostages that she hadn’t shared. She hadn’t been there to save people, she’d been there to film the action. There’d been no “Thanks for saving me from rape, torture and decapitation.” No sorry for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. No shouldering her portion of the blame when everything had turned to shit and her husband had died.
Instead she’d branded Daniel a killer and plastered his face across every tabloid newspaper and broadsheet in the UK. She’d blown his chance of doing covert military operations for the rest of his natural born days and embarrassed the finest military unit in the world. Worse, he’d embarrassed the finest military unit in the world. He’d made a decision to protect his patrol and fire his weapon into that derelict room. And while it might have been the right thing to do, those decisions had stripped him bare and flayed his hide, leaving nothing but the shell of a man he’d once been.
And so he’d turned his back on society and responsibility.
But suddenly, his no-strings lifestyle felt less than worthy. Not so much “living for today,” as “not giving a damn about anybody or anything.” And while he did not want to get entangled in relationships, he didn’t want to throw away what little integrity he had left. He didn’t want to crash a helicopter full of people because he was too tired or hungover to do the job properly.
His character had been annihilated by a member of the British press and now he was proving her right. This was not a proud realization for a man who’d once been top of his game. It was time to grab hard onto the only thing he had left—flying.
So, no more one-night stands. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t gone without before
. And more important, no more booze. The thought alone brought him out in the sort of cold panic that stank of cowardice and addiction.
When he had sunk so low?
He transmitted his location into the ether on the aviation frequency. There were five other helicopter pilots working the zone, and a flotilla of small planes in and out of the north.
“Heading north to Tuttuk Pond, this is helicopter Foxtrot Delta Charlie Tango, over. Any conflicting traffic, call Delta Charlie Tango at Tuttuk Pond.”
The radio crackled.
“Foxtrot Delta Charlie Tango, this is Bell Victor Alpha Delta Hugo on the ground at Tuttuk Pond, over.”
There was another helicopter already on site? “Alpha Delta Hugo, Delta Charlie Tango. Any reason two of us turned up for the same job?”
He heard a laugh on the other side of the connection. “No one told you, Fox? It’s your day to go piss in a pot, Danny boy. Your orders have changed, and you’re to head to the clinic at Nain for a spot alcohol check, out.”
“Roger that.” There was a punch to his stomach, both from the nickname he hadn’t heard in years and the sudden fear that he’d destroyed his newfound career by drinking when he knew it was against the rules. On this tour, it wasn’t just an eight-hour bottle-to-throttle rule. Any blood alcohol level above basal might be enough to throw him off the job, and even though he wouldn’t lose his pilot’s license, he was sick of fucking up.
He circled the site and acknowledged his fellow pilot one last time. And there was Dwight Wineberg, General Foreman for the mine, asshole extraordinaire, standing down on the lakeshore giving him the finger. Daniel wanted to swoop low over the jerk and make him dive for cover, but that was too juvenile, even for him.
“Delta Charlie Tango. Good luck, son,” the other pilot keyed in. “Alpha Delta Hugo, over and out.”
The swelling in Daniel’s throat expanded until he had to work to swallow the lump. Bloody hell. He hadn’t attempted to get to know the other pilots or personnel here, and the guy was reaching out to him. “Copy that. Over and out.”
Edge of Survival Page 9