In the Barren Ground

by Loreth Anne White

  “It was a mental health awareness message. And there was a song that had been written to go with the campaign, sung in all the languages of the north. French, English, the indigenous languages, throat singing. I’d heard that song on the radio that very morning. You are not alone. And as I was sitting there, looking into the eyes of those diverse people, I suddenly saw the eyes of the cop who’d picked me out of the gutter and told me that I was worth more. I saw him looking at me out of all those eyes in that poster. I heard that song in my head. I heard my grandmother’s voice. And suddenly I was not alone.” Her voice hitched, and she fell silent.

  “I think you’re a lot stronger than I am, Tana Larsson,” he said quietly.

  Her eyes flashed up to his. Shock rippled across her face. And then she was fighting tears.

  He did what he did best—deflected. He reached for a photo on the table and got up to pin it on the board, giving her space, and his heart ached. For so many reasons.

  Redemption.

  Second chances.

  He cleared his throat, and still studying the board, he said, “So, I think we can rule the old bones out. We can plot the trip tonight, start gearing up, and leave at first light tomorrow, go to the lodge, go talk to Elliot.”

  “And Jennie Smithers.”

  He turned. Her eyes had been rubbed red, and she was pale.

  “Do you think it could be more than one?” she said. “Acting in a group, a pack? Some sort of cult thing?”

  “Well, there’s a lot of violence in those images. Strength. Rage, maybe. We should keep it on the table as a possibility.”

  “I’ll get the maps and compass. You can show me the route to the lodge and badlands.” She pushed her chair back, and Crash watched her go to fetch the old-school topography maps because satellite navigation out here right now was tricky, and relying on it alone could prove deadly. And he thought he might just be falling for her in all the wrong ways.

  Through the late evening and into the night they planned, and packed survival gear, and rations from the storeroom. The rest they could pick up from the diner and his place tomorrow along the way.

  It was close on midnight when Tana said she needed to sleep.

  “I bunk here tonight,” he said.

  She was about to protest.

  “Until we figure out if the poisonings and sabotage and the warning on your door are related to the killings, you’re not safe alone. I’ll take the cot in the little room down the hall.”

  Her eyes held his. She was tired, and she nodded. Crash took Max and Toyon out for a pee as she locked the place down. When he came inside, she’d removed her flak vest, and untied her bun. Their arms brushed as she made for the stairs up to her apartment. He caught her scent. Their lips were close. He touched her face and she went stone-still. Time stretched and hummed between them, as did an undeniable, surging awareness that there was a mutual physical attraction between them, something dangerous and powerful and unstoppable that made no sense, and all sense.

  Slowly, he bent his head to kiss her, but she clamped her hand tightly over his wrist, her dark eyes holding his. She swallowed. “No,” she whispered, voice thick. “This is not a good idea.”

  “No,” he said quietly. “It’s not.” Then, “Goodnight, Detective.”

  “I’m not a detective.”

  “Not yet,” he said quietly. “But you’ll make a damn fine one when the time comes.”

  The wind howls and snow billows in gigantic curtains down the street.

  Once more, from a familiar “hunting” blind in shadows across the street, a figure huddles in the cold and watches the police station, feet going numb in the snow.

  It’s past midnight when the lights inside finally go out one by one. O’Halloran has walked the cop’s dogs. His snowmobile is parked outside. He’s sleeping over tonight. They’ve become a team, and now everything must change. Because it can never be the same again, not while the Mountie hunts for a killer. She has to go. They both do now.

  A blinding, suffocating vitriol swells inside the chest of the Watcher, and out from the dark wilderness and whirling storm comes a howl of rage. It carries on the wind, and takes shape in the twisting veils of snow. It’s the Hunger, the retribution of the wild and lonely places. It’s coming closer than ever before, right into town, and it wails and twists down the streets, hitting windows as people sleep, poking down chimneys, and testing under doors.

  The Watcher waits a while longer. Cold sinks deeper. A plan is formed.

  Then the figure slips out of shadow and is sucked away by the monsters of night …

  CHAPTER 32

  Thursday, November 8. Day length: 7:31:57 hours.

  “My marriage broke up, like Elliot’s,” Jennie Smithers said as she set mugs of coffee onto the low table in front of Tana and Crash. Tana watched the woman carefully as she seated herself on the worn sofa opposite them. Jennie’s frame was bent, skeletal, as if grief had consumed her from the inside out, leaving a dry husk of a human who was once a robust mother and wife full of life and laughter. Tana could see from old photos on the mantel what Jennie Smithers had looked like before the wolves got her daughter.

  She and Crash had come past the Smithers’ tiny clapboard house early, and had seen the lights on inside. Jennie had welcomed them in despite the hour. Her story was a tragic one and she rubbed her arm nervously as she spoke.

  “It was Elliot who pushed the idea about Dakota maybe being stalked by some sort of sexual predator. I was mad with grief. I so badly wanted something to hold on to, to do. A way to make things right again. But it was a mistake, listening to Elliot—that whole Crow TwoDove thing, targeting him. Look what happened to his life. So much pain all around. So much. I’m so sorry for my part in it.”

  Tana leaned forward. “But why, in your opinion, was Elliot so gung-ho on the fact that it wasn’t wolves? What convinced him that Dakota might have been hurt by a person, and then left out there for the animals? Why did he think it wasn’t an accident—that she didn’t fall off her sled, hurt herself?”

  Jennie rubbed her knees. “Guilt,” she said finally. “Elliot was driven by guilt, remorse, anger that he’d not been able to protect his daughter, that he hadn’t kept her safe inside the tent that night. You see … he was drinking.”

  “So you think he might have been passed out in the tent that night, which is why he didn’t hear screams?” Tana said. And she appreciated that Crash was sitting back, just observing and letting her do her job.

  “I started to hear talk around town that Elliot had been going on worse and worse liquor binges, after which he’d pass out. And he was suffering from memory blackouts. Looking back, I think he needed to pin blame on something in order to absolve himself.” She wavered. “I … I finally saw a mental health worker myself,” she said. “And it was her who suggested this about Elliot. She thought I might be trying to do the same sort of thing, find blame, by pointing fingers at Crow, perhaps. And that I shouldn’t beat myself up over it. She said grief was tricky, not linear, not the same for everyone, and we all went through denial, and had our own coping mechanisms.”

  “When did he start drinking heavily?”

  A big orange tabby cat jumped up into Jennie’s lap, and she began to stroke it like a lifeline.

  “Word around town was Elliot had had an extramarital affair, and when it ended, that’s when he really upped his intake.”

  Tana and Crash exchanged a fast glance. “With who?” Tana said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do you know?”

  Jennie inhaled deeply, looked away for a moment. “The therapist, the health worker that I was seeing, she became my friend. She was the one who told me. She said Elliot’s wife came to her about it, but never said who the other woman was. She said the daughter, Regan, knew about the affair, too, and that after Elliot had broken it off he took Regan ice fishing because he was trying to make amends with his family, be a dad again.”

  Tana’s mind shot
to Addy, how she’d explained the fine line that needed to be drawn between friendship and professional distance and patient confidentiality when working in a closely knit and small community like Twin Rivers. Jennie’s therapist had crossed that line. “Is this health worker still in town?”

  Jennie shook her head. “She works in Whitehorse now.”

  “Can you give me her name?”

  “I … no, I can’t. I shouldn’t have said anything. I can’t, please understand.”

  Tana nodded. She could check records, find out herself. She’d also call Elliot’s wife if need be.

  They thanked Jennie, and as she showed them to the door, Tana said, “So, there was really no evidence at all of stalking? No strange … drawings, or quotes from a book, maybe?”

  Jennie’s gaze shot to Tana’s. “What?”

  “Dakota never received words from a poem, or something unusual like that?”

  “Wait … wait right here.” She hurried down the hall, and returned with a piece of paper.

  On it was an ink drawing of a wendigo-like beast like the one Crash had described seeing in Drakon Sinovski’s The Hunger. In the sketch the cadaverous creature held a dripping female head. Beneath the image were scrawled the words: In the barren grounds of the soul, monsters we breed, with heart of ice and eyes that roll in blood.

  The handwriting was similar to the writing on the note Veronique Garnier had found among Selena Apodaca’s things.

  Tana felt Crash tense beside her.

  “When did you find this?” Tana said.

  “When I finally cleared out Dakota’s room, two years after she was gone.”

  “She hadn’t mentioned it to you before?”

  “No. Is … is it important?”

  Tana forced a smile. “It’s probably nothing. But why, if I might ask, did you keep this one thing when you cleared out the rest of her belongings?”

  “By accident, really. I’d set it aside in my dresser to ask my husband if he knew what it was, because it was just so … strange. Then …” She coughed. “Then my marriage started falling apart, and I forgot about it.”

  “Can I keep this?” Tana said.

  “Sure. I … why are you looking into all this now? Is it because of that wolf attack on those two biologists? It’s not linked, is it? It can’t be.”

  “We’re just covering all bases. Thank you so much for your help, Mrs. Smithers.”

  “Jennie, please.”

  As they walked back to their snowmobiles, which were already being covered in a layer of freshly falling snow, Crash said, “It’s a copy of the same drawing I saw in that book. Similar wording in the text.”

  “This is weird,” Tana said, reaching for her helmet.

  Crash dusted off their machines. “So, Elliot was having blackouts,” he said as he worked. “And guilt from his affair. After he’s broken it off, he takes Regan out on an ice fishing trip to make amends, but he couldn’t leave the bottle behind. He slips that night, overindulges. Goes to sleep blind drunk. And some time in the night, Regan dies, and he hears not even a scream. His guilt, remorse, self-flagellation deepens tenfold. He starts drinking harder, looking for blame. His wife takes it out on him, and the Novak marriage finally folds. And he starts losing the plot completely.”

  “That, or he did it. He killed his daughter. Maybe even in a blackout, and he knows he did something, but can’t remember.”

  “And who was the woman he’d had an affair with? If we could find her—”

  “We’ll ask him directly,” Tana said, pulling on her balaclava and then her helmet. She swung her leg over her machine, and fired the engine. She was kitted out in full foul-weather gear—padded with down midlayers and covered with waterproof shells. It was still dark, and it would probably remain so because of the heavy fog and thick snowfall. Crash revved his own engine.

  They were using two machines for the trip. For safety, and because Tana had no need to hide her RCMP logo this time. And because they also had to carry a fair bit of gear and extra gas as the journey would require an overnight stay, possibly in the bush. They’d risen early enough to finish packing survival gear, and Tana had left a note for Rosalie, asking her once again to watch over Max and Toyon, and to stay overnight at the station if she could. She was going to owe Rosalie big time.

  Crash took off at a clip ahead of her. They needed to travel fast to make the distance. Tana tucked in close behind him. Releasing the throttle, she picked up speed, and felt the g-forces gathering low and delicious in her gut.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Why did you bring her here?” Sturmann-Taylor said, voice low.

  “Is it a problem?” Crash held the lodge owner’s penetrating blue gaze without a blink. It was early evening—he and Tana had ridden hard all day to reach Tchliko Lodge before nightfall, and Sturmann-Taylor had not even tried to hide his surprise—and irritation—at seeing Crash and Tana rolling up like two snow-covered yetis on their snowmobiles in the storm.

  “It was just unexpected,” Sturmann-Taylor said, keeping Crash back in the hallway as his butler led Tana into the library ahead of them. “Seeing you with that cop—I thought she was on your ass for bootlegging.”

  Crash had known this would be the risk of escorting Tana into the Tchliko lair. Because nothing, no possibility, escaped the shrewd and calculating brain of Alan Sturmann-Taylor, especially when he’d made clear that he was considering working with Crash on shipments of a more sensitive nature, and most likely highly illegal.

  Having brought Tana here could derail everything. Would Crash make the decision again if he was given a second run? Yes. Things had changed, were changing. But what worried him now was not so much what might happen to his cover with Sturmann-Taylor as what could happen to Tana. He might be endangering her, because if he was correct about Sturmann-Taylor, the reach of the man’s power was limitless, and his desire to hold on to that power knew few bounds. And now that Tana was in Sturmann-Taylor’s sights, he was going to be watching her keenly.

  “She’s a paying client, that’s all,” Crash countered quietly. “She came bashing on my door, asking for a flight out to Tchliko. I said ‘no-way-hosay,’ not in this shit. But she knows I’m familiar with the route out here, so when she could find no one else, she returned asking for a snowmobile guide. I wasn’t going to draw attention to myself by refusing.” He continued to meet Sturmann-Taylor’s quietly assessing stare. “Besides, I like to know what I’m up against.”

  “What does she want with Spatt?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s go in and find out, shall we?”

  Tension whispered through Tana as she was shown into the library ahead of Crash. Sturmann-Taylor had held him back, and they were conversing quietly in the passage. She figured it was about Crash bringing her here. If Crash was correct about Sturmann-Taylor, and if Crash’s “cover” was now slipping because of his alignment with her, they could both be in serious trouble in this isolated lair.

  “It’s good to see you again, Constable,” Henry Spatt said as she entered. He pushed himself up out of the deep, burgundy leather chair in which he’d been seated beside his evening cocktail. He proffered his hand. Tana shook it, and found his grip no less limp and fleshy than the last time around in the diner.

  “James here”—Spatt nodded toward the butler—“tells me that you came all this way in this terrible storm to see me, of all people.” He chuckled, and it caught phlegm in his throat, which made him cough. “S’cuse me.” He dabbed at his lips with his hankie. “Years of tobacco.” He chuckled again. “And it’s not really ‘James,’ by the way. However, Alan likes to keep his manservant obscure, or mysterious perhaps. So I call him James, as in James the Butler, from that British show that was so popular in the seventies. You know the show?”

  “Uh, no, sir, I don’t.”

  “Well, of course you don’t, would you?” He tucked his hankie back into his breast pocket. “You’re far too young, and too … local. Please, do take a seat. And thank you, J
ames, you may leave now.”

  The manservant did not leave. He simply stepped back into shadows.

  “Local?” Tana asked. She remained standing.

  “Oh, and call me Henry. Much nicer to be on first-name terms. Was it … Tana?”

  “Larsson,” she said. “Constable Larsson.”

  His small round eyes met hers in silence for a few minutes, then his equally round face cracked into a smile that showed his sharp little incisors. “Of course. You’re on a job. Professional reasons are what must have brought you here.” He reseated himself in the leather chair. “Now, I am most intrigued, what can I do for you?” He reached for his cocktail.

  Crash and Alan Sturmann-Taylor entered the room. It was warm inside. Fire burned in the hearth. Shelves of books covered the walls. And where there were gaps between the shelves, the heads of dead things had been mounted. Animal pelts were draped over the backs of chairs and had been fashioned into pillows as well—bear skins, leopard, zebra, antelope. The chandeliers were crafted from antlers, the side-table lampshades, she guessed, were real animal hide, too. Sumptuous and macabre, a hunter’s trophies of the murdered.

  Crash did not meet her eyes as he made his way to stand beside the fire. She knew his game would be this, and she kept her distance.

  “Can I get you a drink, Constable?” their host said.

  “Water would be great. Been a long ride.”

  “Of course.” He nodded to his butler, and the man sifted like a specter from the room.

  “So, to what do we owe this honor, Constable? What is so urgent that brings the Mountie out on her mechanical steed in this foul weather?” said Sturmann-Taylor.