Fire in the Stars

by Barbara Fradkin

  The salt stung his eyes, causing him to squint to make out the shore through the surf, which shot plumes of white spray into the air. Birds wheeled overhead, eager for fish.

  After more than an hour battling the sea, he was passing a stretch of black rock when a flash of colour caught his eye. The waves curled back, gathering force for another assault, and in that brief lull, he saw the red-and-white hull of a boat. He steered toward shore cautiously, afraid that his boat would be dashed on the rocks. As he drew closer, he could make out not one but two boats lying side by side. Spotting a small sliver of inlet, he threaded his boat through it and leaped out into the shallow water to drag the vessel safely up on the sand. He was panting by the time he had wrestled it free of the undertow.

  After tying his boat to a sturdy bush, he clambered along the slippery shore to inspect the two boats, one of which had a gaping hole in its splintered hull. Amanda’s boat was intact and secured to a bush on the shore. Both lay beached at the high-water mark.

  He knew the others had searched her boat that morning, but he did so again in the hope they had missed a crucial clue. She had left most of her supplies back in Conche, as if she had intended this to be a brief trip; yet that had been two days ago.

  Under the front seat he found a dry sack containing locator beacons, an emergency blanket, and a change of clothes. A chill ran through him. Why would she have left all this in the boat? What had happened to her?

  He scanned the shore and the grey forest, hoping to find a clue to her direction. The coast was nearly impassable, for the slippery crags and gullies would challenge the nimblest mountain goat. Inland, the tuckamore wove a twisted, nearly impenetrable wall. He approached, looking for even the tiniest tear in its weave. Finally he found a small, cave-like hole into a path of soft red needles.

  He crouched in the opening and cupped his hands around his mouth to call her name. The wind snatched his words and scattered them. “Useless,” he muttered, ducking into the ghostly labyrinth of spindly grey trees. As he fought his way forward, he studied the ground for signs of disturbance. He thought he detected swirls and scuffs in the needle floor, but it was some distance before he found a clear paw print in the damp sand. He examined it carefully. A coyote or fox? Was he on a fool’s errand, following the well-worn path of local animals on their way to the rich tidal pools at the ocean’s edge?

  Then a very man-made flash of orange caught his eye. A moment later he was staring at the blood-stained lifejacket, his heart pounding. Horror slammed through him.

  “Amanda!” he screamed. Over and over. Up ahead, a faint path twisted and wove through the dense trees. He stumbled on, thrashing, sweating, and terrified. “Please, please let her be safe,” he whispered, pausing every few minutes to catch his breath and call her name.

  It was then, as he sifted the silence of the forest, that he spotted the poorly fashioned hiding place. He tore away the spruce boughs and boulders and swept the dirt from the pallid face.

  Fell back on his heels, tears welling.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Amanda had almost given up by the time they finally caught a fish, a mid-sized brook trout that flashed silver and gold in the murky water of the pond. Even Tyler summoned the energy to cheer as he came down to join her on the water’s edge. The expression of hope on his pinched face made all the frustrations of the day worthwhile.

  When she’d found him the night before, Tyler had been subsisting on berries and roots for four days. He was almost beyond reacting. Pale, chilled, and traumatized, he had dug himself into a protective lair and prepared to die. He had not spoken a word or shed a tear when she enveloped him in her arms. She had spent the evening trying to coax him back to life with a roaring fire, hot berry tea with willow bark, some boiled roots, and the last of her power bar. When darkness came, she had drawn him and Kaylee close to her in the shelter of his lair and whispered words of hope in his ear.

  “Tomorrow morning we’ll catch some fish and have a real barbeque, and once we get our strength back, we’re going to find the ocean.”

  He had not answered, but she felt his limp fingers tighten slightly in hers. The next morning he slept so late that she feared he was truly ill. She had time to build the fire back up to a good blaze, pick more berries and willow, and drink two mugs of hot tea before he finally opened his eyes. He stared at her a long time without speaking, but his gaze was clear. He’s not ill, she thought with a rush of relief, just exhausted. After days of grief and terror, he had finally collapsed.

  He was taller, thinner, and more angular than she remembered, and his blue eyes were bruised with defeat, but the rakish cowlick over his forehead reminded her of his devil-may-care father. As they shared berries and tea, she made no effort to ask about Phil, but instead tried to focus him on their plans for the day. He needed hope, not pain. She was met by silence and shrugs. Gone was the little boy who threw himself into each day, who asked a million questions and had an endless fascination with every jerry-rigged contraption in the village. He had not even asked her how they were going to catch a fish.

  That morning for the first time, the sun was peeking through the canopy and the sky was a rich azure overhead. She knew now which direction led to the ocean, but she still had no idea of the distance. She could hear no murmur of surf or drone of motorboats. It might be a long trek through bogs and mountains. Without food, Tyler would grow too weak for the journey.

  “Ever eaten bugs, Tyler?” she asked gaily as she began to pull together the filaments of a vine into a rudimentary net.

  He made a face.

  “In Asia they are a delicacy. Do you remember? They eat cockroaches twice the size of my thumb. I don’t think there’s a ready supply of cockroaches here, but crickets and grasshoppers fried up with some berries will do the trick. Butterflies and beetles too. You can use this net to catch them.”

  She counted herself lucky that he didn’t reject her outright. Once she’d finished the small net, she handed it to him and looked around to get her bearings. She considered scaling the tall nearby ridge to get a better view, but wasn’t sure Tyler had the strength.

  “Okay,” she said cheerfully. “Onward to the coast. You watch the sun. Wherever we go, whatever detours we have to make, try to keep it just to our right. And by noon, when it’s almost overhead —”

  “Our shadow will be pointing north,” he answered.

  “Right.” She smiled. “Did your dad teach you that?”

  His shoulders sagged. “Jason did. When we went camping last year.”

  “Ah. If he taught you any other useful stuff, you tell me, okay? Like which of these berries are edible and which will kill us. Because I know a lot about Asia and Africa, but not as much about these woods.”

  Tyler pointed to the scarlet berries she’d been eating. “Bunchberries. Jason called them the hiker’s friend. And these violets are edible.” He leaned over to pluck a plant and stuffed the leaves into his mouth. Kaylee had been ranging far into the woods, but she returned now to follow along. Amanda hoped she had found some mice or squirrels to keep starvation at bay.

  As they walked, Tyler collected a small cache of insects and plants while she pondered the challenge of catching something more substantial. She had just decided it was time to cook up what he had, when they struggled over a rise to see a huge pond spread out below them. Amanda felt a thrill of excitement.

  “Do you think that pond has fish in it?” she asked.

  “Salmon and brook trout, maybe,” he said. “Jason took us fishing once in a lake like this.”

  She was already salivating as she slithered down the slope to the water’s edge. A large boulder a few yards offshore provided a perfect vantage point. She took off her boots, waded out to it, and climbed up to study the brown water. She tossed a few berries onto the water and watched the water come alive with silver flashes.

  “Dozens of them!” she shout
ed. She sent Tyler to find a straight, sturdy willow branch while she set about designing a hook. During her time in Africa, she had seen simple hooks fashioned from wood and hemp. It took her a few tries to find a sliver of wood that retained its strength when whittled to a point. Together they scoured the shore for dried reeds or fibrous stalks that could be braided into cord. All over the world, she’d seen baskets and rope woven from grasses, so she knew it could be done. As he watched her struggle with grasses that broke and unravelled, Tyler fretted.

  “Why don’t we make a spear?” he asked. “Like the cavemen.”

  “Great idea! You’re the Newfoundlander, go ahead. We’ll have a race to see who catches the most fish.”

  He dragged branches out of the deadfall and whittled away at a few before throwing the broken sticks away and slumping down on a log wearily. Amanda’s heart ached. The old Tyler would have loved the challenge of beating her, but this Tyler gave up with barely a fight. Was it just the hunger, or had the trauma of his father’s death drained all the spirit from him?

  Instead, she redoubled her efforts to catch some food. The sun was well past noon by the time she assembled a passable fishing rod and threaded an earthworm onto her hook. She climbed up on the rock, praying the hook would catch and the flimsy, twisted cord would hold.

  It took three snapped lines, but she finally managed to wrestle a brook trout onto the shore. It was a glory to behold, a foot and a half of glistening silver. Tyler built a fire while she gutted it. She tossed the head to Kaylee and threaded the body onto a stick over the roaring flame.

  Nothing had ever tasted so fabulous. By the time Amanda had licked her fingers clean and fed a portion to Kaylee, the sun was slipping toward the ridge to the west and the shadows were growing long. Tyler was slumped against a rock by the fire, drowsy from the heat and the food.

  She had hoped to hear helicopters overhead, confirming that people were searching for them, but so far there had been nothing. If they were going to be found, they had to find the coast. I’m sorry, Tyler, she thought, I know you need to sleep but we have to keep going just a little farther, while we still have daylight.

  The three police officers formed a silent, respectful ring around the body, which Chris had tried to protect with his jacket. He knew the scene was hopelessly contaminated, both by himself and by whomever had buried him there, but he’d covered the body more out of compassion than out of any desire to protect the scene. Phil looked so vulnerable splayed out on his back in the woods, prey to any beasts and insects attracted to an easy feast.

  Above all, Phil hated to be vulnerable.

  The two other officers, Sergeant Amis and the incident commander Sergeant Noseworthy, had made very good time up from Conche, thanks to the powerful Zodiac now pulled up on the shore. It was mid afternoon, leaving several hours of daylight despite the unnatural gloom of the forest. But even in the scant couple of hours since Chris made his urgent call, the flies had multiplied and the fragile flesh around Phil’s eyes had begun to bloat.

  Chris turned away, pretending to study the surrounding woods, while Amis prodded the body carefully. “Rigor’s gone. Been dead a couple of days at least.”

  “How long before Dr. Iannucci and the crime scene team get here?” Chris asked.

  “I had to ask HQ for extra personnel,” Amis replied, wrinkling up his nose as if in distaste. He eased the body onto its front and bent close to inspect the bullet hole. “They’re sending a team over from St. John’s that can be on the ground in the morning. They don’t want the body removed until they can have a look. But meanwhile we need to develop a working hypothesis. All hell seems to be breaking loose around here.”

  “I don’t think he was killed here,” Chris said. While he’d been waiting on shore for the officers to arrive, he’d taken a closer look at the damaged boat that Phil and Tyler had presumably used. Waves and spray had washed some of the blood away, making it difficult to detect at a casual glance, but he had found red smears and streaks on the seats as well as a small pool on the floor at the front of the boat. He had pointed it out to the officers as he led them up the shore, but Amis was more intent on getting to the body and hadn’t given it a second glance.

  Now he straightened and stared at Chris through narrowed eyes.

  “I think he was shot either while he was in the boat, or just climbing into it,” Chris said. “Probably back at Old Stink’s place.”

  “For the love of God,” Amis snapped. “The victim has a name. According to government records, Allister Parsons.”

  “Parsons?” Chris said in surprise. “Like the shrimp fisherman who hauled the body out of his net?”

  Noseworthy, who was peering into the dense tuckamore, gave a dismissive grunt. “Half the Northern Pen are Parsons, or related to them.”

  As if Noseworthy weren’t even there, Amis’s eyes never left Chris. Single-minded guy, thought Chris uneasily.

  “You know this man, Corporal,” he said. “What’s your theory?”

  Chris paused to gather his thoughts. Waiting on the shore for their arrival and desperate to distract himself from worries about Amanda, he’d occupied his mind cobbling together scenarios. “Judging from the food and clothing missing from Stink — Parsons’s — house, I think Phil Cousins took them —”

  “Stole them.”

  “Probably,” Chris said reluctantly. “He seemed hell-bent on going into the wilderness with his son.”

  “Hell-bent is right,” Amis snorted. “Half crazed, according to the locals.” He was standing ramrod straight over the body, vibrating suspicion.

  This time Chris sidestepped the interruption. “I think Stink — Parsons — shot him as he was escaping in his boat.”

  “And then he got out of his boat with a bullet in his back, and took an axe to Parsons’s head. Quite the superman.”

  “There was no blood on the wharf, sir. Parsons was attacked inside his own cabin. And I believe the rifle shots came from inside the cabin, as well. I found shell casings there.”

  Amis’s gaze wavered. “That’s what the crime scene team concluded, as well. So if Parsons and Cousins clashed, it took place in the cabin before Cousins went back to his boat. Perhaps Cousins surprised him in bed.”

  “But Cousins was already wearing his life jacket when he was shot.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t bother to take it off!”

  “Did the crime scene guys find any traces of blood on the wharf? This gunshot wound bled a lot.”

  Amis shook his head. “Possibly it hadn’t soaked through the life jacket yet.”

  Or possibly Phil wasn’t the killer, Chris thought. By now Noseworthy had stepped away from the scene and squatted to examine the spongy loam of the forest floor carefully, using a measuring tool from her pack.

  “Forensics won’t be here until tomorrow, but ERT should get started here right away.” she said, still bent over the ground. “The boy Tyler is still out there. We need to rescue him ASAP. Air, ground, shore searches, and starting right here, K9.”

  Amis’s mouth pinched in protest, but Noseworthy cut him short. “The missing child is our priority. Moreover, I think someone else has been here. Just eyeballing it, I found two possible prints here in the mud. And a mid-sized canine.”

  “Amanda!” Chris exclaimed, feeling the first stirrings of hope and relief. “I bet she found the body too! That’s why she hasn’t come back. She’s gone off looking for Tyler.”

  Noseworthy’s thin lips drew down in disapproval. “Without going for help? Meaning we now have two missing civilians to search for, and no clear idea what we’re dealing with here.” She unfolded her lanky body and headed back toward the shore. “Not a moment to lose, Amis.”

  Chris and Amis caught up with her at the water’s edge, where she was consulting her satellite GPS as she fired off orders into her radio.

  Amis nodded toward the Zodiac. “
I brought a tent, evidence bins, and perimeter tape —” To his credit, a ghost of a smile crept across his face. “For all the good that will do. Constable Bradley will relieve you and guard the scene until the team from St. John’s arrives tomorrow.” He gazed out to sea as if he were addressing the waves. “You did a good job with the Parsons scene earlier, Corporal, and your insights into this scene so far has been duly noted, but this is too personal …”

  His voice faded as Noseworthy signed off and stalked over to join them. “K9 is on their way, but possibly not until the morning, so ERT will establish a perimeter and start with a hasty search along the shore and the roads and ATV trails in the vicinity while there is still daylight. And —” She nodded toward Amis “— the medical examiner’s officer in St. John’s called for you with some information on the old man Parsons. They haven’t conducted the post-mortem yet, but they thought you should know that the GSR on him was negative.”

  No gunshot residue. Which means that Stink didn’t shoot Phil, Chris thought, his earlier relief vanishing. There’s another killer on the loose.

  Chapter Twenty

  By Amanda’s estimation, she and Tyler had been following the stream for about an hour when an errant puff of wind brought with it the scent of smoke. Tyler shrank back, but Amanda’s hopes soared. She turned in a slow circle, sniffing the air to pinpoint its direction, but the scent evaporated on the capricious breeze.

  She picked a dry frond of moss from a tree and tossed it into the air in the hope the breeze would catch it. When it angled to the ground some distance away, she gave a cry of triumph and set off into the wind, shouting over her shoulder.