by J. S. Marlo
“He would have regained consciousness and gone home before the cold got to him.” The old woman stirred the embers with a stick. Her feelings about the RCMP officer as visible as the hairy birthmark on her left cheek. “Where did you take him?”
Lucky had borrowed his snowmobile. With him unconscious on the seat behind her, she’d followed the tracks in the snow to where he’d come from.
“A shed near some ruins in a clearing.” A cute white dog wearing a blue sweater and black booties had welcomed her arrival, suggesting a human presence in the vicinity. She had cooped up the officer with the animal. “Someone will find him.”
“What about his snowmobile?”
The fire illuminated Greta’s retreat toward the entrance of the cave.
“I left it by the stream where he’d caught up with us, and disabled the engine. From there, I was careful covering my tracks.”
At first, Lucky had been afraid she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to the cave, but it’d seemed she’d been blessed with a good sense of direction. If only I could say the same of my memory.
“I’m sure you did good, Lucky, but it doesn’t matter anymore.” Greta picked a hunting knife from the top of a rain barrel and traced the blade. “I’ve fought for sixty years. That’s long enough. Once dawn comes, I will finally rest.”
***
Terri hurried to answer the door before the buzzer awoke her daughter.
“Lee?” His RCMP cruiser was parked in front of the house. He wore his civilian clothes. “It’s late. What are you doing here?”
A sheepish smile traveled all the way up to the corner of his eyes. “I was in the neighborhood. I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”
“Really?” The entire crappy town was the neighborhood. This wasn’t much of an excuse. “Come in. I’ll make coffee.”
He shed his boots and coat, and followed her into the kitchen. “I saw the reflection of the television in the window. I thought you might like some company.”
“That’s sweet of you.” His surprise visit added a much welcome diversion to her lone, boring evening. “Are you busy with the explosion?”
In jeans and a plaited shirt, Lee appeared heavier and older than when he wore his uniform. She preferred the latter.
“If you mean Hannah Parker’s cabin, I have nothing to do with it.” He stood by the counter, his elbow brushing her arm as he readied two mugs. “The sergeant gave the case to Stone.”
“Will Stone do a good job?” In the earlier years of their marriage, Brent had talked about his cases, used her as a sounding board, something she’d relished.
“Are you kidding?” Keeping his voice low didn’t stop the indignation from resounding loud and clear. “The guy is inept, Terri. He forgot his Ski-Doo deep in the woods and called me to go pick him up. I wasn’t impressed.”
“How did he do that?” Something about Stone didn’t sit right with her. She didn’t trust him.
“The engine stalled. Had he bothered looking under the hood, he would have seen the loose wire. It took me two seconds to fix it.” Lee shook his head as he took his mug to the table and sat, one leg crossed over his opposite knee. “There’s no signal that far out in the woods, so he walked to Parker’s obliterated cabin. By the time I showed up, he couldn’t remember where he’d abandoned the darn thing. I rode with him for nearly an hour before we spotted it at the fork.”
“He’d parked where the creek split in two and walked from there? It must have taken him half a day.” Her back against the counter, she cupped her mug with both hands to stop her fingers from twitching. “Why did he venture that way?”
“He got lost.” Her guest took a sip of his coffee then added a teaspoon of sugar from the bowl on Lyn’s placemat. “I swear the guy has the internal compass of a twister.”
The story sounded too far-fetched not to be true. “Any sign of Parker or the child?”
“No, but Stone found her dog starving in the shed.”
“Why don’t we go sit on the couch?” No man had ever resisted her ingenuous smile and fluttering eyelashes. “I’d love to hear more about your dreadful day with Stone.”
***
Seated on the morgue table late at night, Avery winced under Fred’s palpations. “I fell on the ice and hit my head.”
That was the official story he’d fed his colleagues. Until he solved that case, he intended to keep Hannah and the mysterious woman’s presence in the woods a secret.
“Any memory loss, dizziness…pain?”
He’d been whacked, and the doctor was prodding every millimeter of the bump. Of course it hurt.
“It’s just a bruise, Doc, but the sergeant insisted I come.” Following the order allowed Avery to visit Fred without rousing any suspicion. “Just write down you examined me and I’m good to return to duty, then we can talk off the record.”
“Is it about Hannah?” Fred stopped his examination and took a wobbly step backward. “Did you find her and Rory?”
“I found Snowflake in the shed. Alive.” Avery had left the dog in his kitchen with a bowl of water and dry cereal until he bought some canine food.
“That’s good news, Stone. Hannah…she’s a smart woman, you know.” The doctor fidgeted with the stethoscope wrapped around his neck. “Gramp taught us survival skills, and Hannah has always been a fast learner. If Snowflake managed to survive, so did Hannah. She probably took shelter somewhere with Rory. It’s just a matter of finding where. You can’t stop looking for her. She may be injured and unable to…”
Fred’s voice trailed off in despair, and Avery felt sorry for the man. Disguising the truth brought him no satisfaction, but to protect Rory, he couldn’t divulge his little man’s whereabouts.
“There were no bodies on the site of the explosion, Doc. I intend to keep looking until I find them.”
As the doctor nodded, his eyes lost their focus. “I heard a faulty valve caused the propane tank to explode. It’s all my fault. The cabin was old. I knew it wasn’t safe for her to live there alone with Rory. It wasn’t like I couldn’t afford to support them, I even built a basement suite in my new house just for her and Rory, but she refused to move in. I should have insisted. I—” He slapped his arms down his sides. “Why didn’t she listen?”
Knowing Hannah, her brother could have argued until he turned blue, she wouldn’t have budged.
“She’s a proud and independent woman.” The kind of woman that can haunt a man for the rest of his life. “Did she ever talk to you about the day she found your grandfather dead in the forest?”
Fred pulled a chair from underneath the counter and straddled it the wrong way. Clamping his hands together, he rested his elbows on the edge of the backrest. “Funny you mention his death. She came to see me a few days ago. She wanted to look at the autopsy reports of Gramp and the two teenagers who killed him.”
“Did she say why?” If she’d been suspicious of her grandfather’s death before he showed her the suicide note, then it was possible she’d asked one too many questions and threatened the murderers. It could spell motive to kill her. Avery wished she’d confided in him.
“No, and I refused her request.” As her brother, he could have told her about their grandfather, but as a coroner, he was bound by confidentiality where it concerned the two teenagers. “I could tell she wasn’t too happy with me. That’s the last time we spoke.”
Unfounded guilt added an invisible weight on Fred’s slumped shoulders—guilt Avery wasn’t at liberty to alleviate.
“If you don’t mind, Doc, I’d like to see those reports.” He’d seen Pike’s file, but not the boys’.
“Help yourself.” Looking as despondent as Rory when faced with an army of green peas, Fred pointed at a filing cabinet next to a water cooler. “Alphabetical order by last name.”
On top of the cabinet, a miniature skeleton dangled from the hook of a banana holder. Avery read the label above each handle. First drawer: A-H. He opened it and browsed from the front for Nelso
n Bourke’s file. Once he retrieved it, he looked for Percy Foley’s.
Elliott. Evans. Fisher. Fleming. Foley. Noel Foley? When Avery had read the police file on Noel Foley, there had been no mention of the man’s death. He pulled the file and read through it.
On November 13th, Noel died of a single gunshot to the heart. Toxicology showed elevated level of alcohol. Fred’s signature was at the bottom of the autopsy report.
The man had died a week after he was arrested by Abbott. A week later the corporal had met the same fate. The day Avery believed in such coincidences would be the day he started gambling.
“I need your help, Doc. Does the name Noel Foley ring a bell?” His gaze focused on Fred, Avery waved the report into the air. “According to this, you dislodged a bullet from his heart last November.”
The coroner straightened his back, a sign that he showed interest in the question. “Foley cleaned his loaded rifle while he was drunk. Alistair, his neighbor from across the pond, heard the shot. By the time he reached Foley’s cabin, it was too late. Not sure how much of an inquiry your colleagues made, but his death was ruled accidental.”
If his colleagues investigated the accidental shooting, they didn’t leave any paper trail. “You mentioned a cabin. Was it near Hannah’s?”
“No. Across town. Opposite direction. Foley had no family left. The cabin is probably abandoned now. Why?”
The cases had to be related, but until he could prove it, Avery chose to ignore the question.
“I want you to write down the direction to Foley’s and Alistair’s cabins and I need copies of those files. Where’s your photocopier?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lucky scanned the white landscape surrounding the back entrance of the cave. Greta, where are you?
Sometime during the night, the fire had died and Greta had ventured outside. Having seen no disturbance in the snow at the front entrance, Lucky had checked the back.
Greta’s elongated snowshoe tracks crossed over the prints of a hopping hare and entered the forest. Wider and rounder, Lucky’s snowshoes left different imprints in the snow.
The old woman wouldn’t have saved her life just to abandon her without an explanation…would she? The cave was her home. Every time they’d been in and out, Greta had taken every precaution to protect its location. At a loss to explain the old woman’s sudden disappearance or unusual behavior, Lucky followed the distinctive trail through the forest.
Birds she could see but not hear played between the branches, their presence soothing her troubled mind. She trudged through the snow for hours without encountering any human activity. The sun’s progression across the sky was her only bearing.
The snowshoe prints led Lucky in the opposite direction of the shed in which she’d abandoned the injured officer. A part of her had wanted to go back and spy on him to see if he’d been rescued, but Greta’s peculiar fate demanded her immediate attention. It didn’t appear anyone had lured the old woman away against her will, but she could have been victim of a malaise or an accident.
At every turn, Lucky expected to see Greta lying in the snow, hurt, unable to come home. The farther she advanced, the muscles in her legs stiffened and her stomach rolled. Skipping breakfast had been a bad idea, but Lucky hadn’t anticipated such a long expedition.
In the distance, something orangey peeked through the needles of the evergreens. Fear heightened her undamaged senses, and she slowed her approach. The light breeze carried the fresh, crispy aroma of winter. No burning fire. No smoke dancing in the light blue sky.
She circled what looked like an abandoned hunter lodge. A cracked, brick chimney rose from the snow-covered roof and faded orange paint peeled from the exterior walls. At the back, a broken window was boarded with planks. The glass in the others was intact but frosty, making it impossible to peek through. Only one door led inside, and it hung slightly crooked in its frame.
No snowmobile tracks. No boot prints. Except for Greta and her, the snow didn’t bear witness to any other intruders.
Greta’s steps stopped in front of the lodge, her snowshoes discarded in the snow under the window adjacent to the door.
Her heart thumped against her chest, reverberating to the tips of Lucky’s fingers. “Greta? Are you there?”
She counted to ten, then to twenty. When nothing moved, Lucky edged the door open. Her breath caught in her throat.
Lying on the floor amidst shattered dishes, Greta stared at her with empty eyes.
***
A man with grayish hair blocked the door, showing only a bare chest, bloodshot eyes, and a stubbly face. “Come back with a warrant. I’m sleeping.”
“Sun is up, Alistair.” Avery had spent the rest of the night reviewing the autopsy and police reports. Had he not fallen asleep on the couch with Snowflake or stopped by Foley’s cabin first, he would have paid Alistair an even earlier visit. “You can answer my questions outside, in your cabin, or at the detachment. The choice is yours.”
The man looked to be in his fifties. As he grumbled and cursed under his breath, someone giggled behind him, a youthful, high pitched sound that could easily be mistaken as a cry for help.
“Move aside, sir.” As he issued the warning, Avery took a step back and rammed the door with his shoulder.
Foley’s former neighbor landed on his naked butt with a thud. A teenage girl wrapped in a sheet yelped.
“I heard you call for help, young lady. I’m Constable Stone. Are you okay?”
Her mouth covered with her palm, the girl glanced back and forth between Alistair and him. Each sweep of her head widened her eyes.
“She didn’t say a word.” Blood spurted from his nose, dripping down Alistair’s chest, but he didn’t seem to care. He grabbed the television stand and propped himself up. “I’m gonna sue your ass off for that”
“Be my guest.” With his boot, Avery kicked the door shut and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. No need to draw his gun. The guy wasn’t concealing any weapons. “I’m arresting you for solicitation of a minor and I’m arresting her for prostitution. You can both file your complaints from jail.”
As the man proclaimed both their innocence with more unsavory words, the girl dared him to check her winter coat hung by the door.
Glancing back and forth between a pink coat and the two underdressed occupants, Avery discarded the cuffs in his jacket and dug for the teenager’s wallet. He found it in the inside pocket. Chloe McTavish. Nineteen years old. To Avery’s relief and disappointment, the driver license appeared genuine.
“Happy now?” She mocked him with a satisfied expression, rubbing Avery the wrong way.
“Nowhere does it say you’re not a hooker. I can still arrest you both and we can sort out your occupation at the detachment, or—” His gaze settled on Chloe McTavish. “I can pretend you have lousy taste in men, which isn’t against the law, and you can go take a long shower while Alistair and I have a friendly chat.” Avery tossed her the wallet. “What will it be, Chloe?”
She turned on her heel, huffing and puffing, then stomped around the corner.
“Now that you have no witness, you gonna beat me up, is that it?”
“No.” Some people watch way too much television. “Have a seat on the couch, Alistair, and place a cushion on your lap. I’d rather not be traumatized for life.”
The guy sneered, but he still complied. “For a cop you have a lousy sense of humor. What do you want?”
“Last November, you found Noel Foley’s body in his cabin. Do you recall that day?”
Alistair gripped the cushion with both hands. “I try not to, but yeah, I do. Why?”
Between the walls of the cabin, water rushed through noisy pipes.
“Take me through what happened that day, would you?” Arms crossed over his chest, Avery leaned his back to the door. A not-so-subtle hint that he wasn’t leaving until he got the entire story.
“I’d gone hunting with him that morning, but we didn’t shoot anythi
ng. He was my only neighbor, you see, and he had no family left, not since the death of his younger cousin. I kinda took him under my wing. A few hours later, I heard a gunshot. I wanted to know what he’d killed so I went to check it out…” His head swayed sideways. “I found him sitting on the floor near the fireplace, his rifle on his lap, a dirty rag in his hand, and a hole in his chest. A big bloody hole the size of my fist. I called you guys right away.”
If they hadn’t shot anything, Noel would have had no reason to clean his rifle. “Did Noel appear drunk? Did you see any booze near his body?”
“Course he died with a bottle. His no-good mother was an alcoholic. He hadn’t been sober since the day he was born. You’re not trying to pin his death on me, are you?”
“No.” The man looked like a shady character, and his attitude grated on Avery’s nerves, but he didn’t fit the profile of a killer. “When you found Noel did you notice anything unusual? Anything out of place? Anything that made you pause? And I’m not talking about the blood.”
“I…I’ve seen him clean his rifle. Every time, he’d checked twice to make sure it wasn’t loaded. Didn’t matter how drunk he was. Maybe he didn’t look too closely…oh…and the rag was in his right hand. He was a lefty. I thought that was weird, but then his flask was on his left side.”
Alistair shrugged the inconsistency away, but it gnawed at Avery’s brain. “Did you share your observations with the officer in charge?”
“And get involved? You’re kidding, right? I don’t trust any of you, not after what Noel told me.”
The pipes rattled, and the water stopped running. “And what did Noel say?”
“He said someone killed and framed his little cousin for murder—that he could prove it, but you guys wouldn’t listen.”
The report taped under the seat confirmed Abbott had listened to Noel’s claim, and they’d both conveniently ended up dead.
“Thank you, Alistair. You’ve been most helpful.”
He sprung to his feet, dropping the cushion on the floor. “That’s it? You’re not arresting me?”