Fire in the Stars

by Barbara Fradkin

  As he tried to judge the swirl of mist in the distance, he realized it was coming closer. A cloud with fading edges but a dense core. Not rain or fog at all, but a vehicle coming down the dusty road. Chris flicked on his roof lights and rested his hand on his pistol. The dot in the plume of dust became a pickup truck, not black but dirty red, driving at a steady, unhurried pace. As it slowed to a stop in front, Chris made out a red light affixed to its roof. He relaxed and climbed out of the cruiser.

  He could see the tall, rangy RCMP officer talking on his radio, presumably reporting in. Chris knocked on his window and the man powered it down.

  “Have you been searching down this way?” Chris asked.

  The officer nodded. “Just calling it in. I checked the whole Croque-Grandois road, but no sign of them. No suspicious activity. You see anything?”

  Chris masked his surprise. ERT had not wanted anyone inside the search zone, not even other officers. “For my records, can I see your ID?”

  “Sure thing.” With an easy smile the officer unclipped his ID from his jacket. Chris stared at it in surprise.

  “Jason Maloney! What the hell are you doing here?”

  Jason stiffened and took a moment to find a retort. “Who the hell wants to know?”

  “Sorry, I just didn’t expect you. I’m Chris Tymko.” He stuck his hand through the window.

  It was Jason’s turn to be surprised. He seemed to hesitate, as if unsure whether to shake the hand or smack it away, before enveloping Chris’s hand in a strong, warm grip. “Phil was a good man, friend to both of us, and we both want the same thing. To find his killer.”

  He opened the door, climbed out, and stretched his long limbs with a groan. He wasn’t as tall as Chris, but he moved with a fluid athlete’s grace that Chris could only envy. No wonder Sheri had succumbed; the man radiated power.

  “When did you get here?” Chris asked, his tone a little edgier than he’d intended.

  “Late last night.”

  “Fast driving from Grand Falls.”

  Jason paused. “I was already on the peninsula looking for Phil.” He rubbed the back of his neck and stared down the highway through slitted eyes. “Look, this is a mess. I mean, the stuff between me and Sheri, me telling Phil … man, I was afraid I’d pushed him over the edge.”

  “You pretty much did.”

  Jason flinched. “But that’s in the past. Some bastard killed him in cold blood, and that’s what’s important now. Finding out who did that, for Phil’s sake.”

  “And for Sheri’s.”

  “That’s over. It’s not going to survive this.”

  Chris said nothing. Perhaps Jason believed that right now, but grieving widows turned to a comforting cop shoulder all the time. Jason seemed to read his mind.

  “Believe it or not, I care about Phil. I felt like shit going behind his back, that’s why I told him. And Tyler! Sweet Jesus, he’s my son’s best friend. A greater kid you’ll never meet. You bet I want to be part of finding him and making things right.”

  Chris felt like punching the man’s face in, but managed an indifferent shrug. “Whatever. Did you clear your search with Incident Command?”

  “Do they know? About me and Sheri?”

  The urge to punch grew stronger. “I don’t know, but you might want to tell them yourself. The major crimes investigator is one hell of a prick, and you can bet he’ll find out.”

  Jason looked grim. He poked his toe around in the gravel and Chris let him stew. Finally he nodded. “Okay. I appreciate you not spilling the beans.”

  “He hasn’t asked me yet. I can’t guarantee I won’t. Just giving you a chance to get there first.”

  “I’m heading in now.” Jason opened the door of his truck, then turned back. There was a tinge of shame in his gaze. “You good out here? Nothing I should pass on? Seems pretty quiet.”

  “It is pretty quiet. Just moose hunters who don’t know the area is closed.”

  “Yeah, I passed one of those myself back down the road,” Jason said. “I guess he got in ahead of the roadblock.”

  “Coming out this way in a beat-up old Sierra with a moose in the back?”

  “No, he was driving in. He had an ATV in the back.”

  Chris grew alert. “No such vehicle came through. Did you stop him?”

  “I told him to turn back, and he said he just had to pick up his buddy who was already in the bush with a moose. I told him to get his buddy, forget the moose, and get the hell out of the area.”

  It was a common enough scenario, Chris thought. It usually took an ATV and a couple of hunters to move a seven- hundred-pound moose carcass out of the bush. “Okay, they’ll probably be along soon. Did you get a licence plate?”

  “Yeah, hold on.” Jason climbed back into his truck and reached for the logbook beside him. “Late-model silver F250, New Brunswick plates, ASCVE6.”

  Chris fetched his own logbook and jotted it down. “I’ll keep my eyes peeled.”

  Jason gave a mock salute, started the truck, and revved off toward the highway in a spray of gravel, leaving Chris to the solitude of his cruiser and the police chatter. He listened for awhile. Nothing new in the search, but a misty rain was beginning to fall.

  It was nearly an hour later, and the mist had long since smothered the mountaintops, when he thought of the moose hunters again. The truck had not come through. Unless the buddy was deep in the bush or they had stayed against Jason’s orders to dress and haul the moose, they should have turned up by now.

  As faint alarm bells began to ring, Chris reached for his radio to call in the plate.

  “We’ll hug the shore inland instead,” Amanda announced, pointing down the forested shore opposite the scoured barrens of the point. They were both standing on the wharf in the rain, dressed in tattered rain gear and squinting out over the drenched landscape. Tyler had woken that morning with his ankle badly swollen, and every effort to move it or put weight on it elicited a cry of pain. If they were ever going to escape, they had no choice but to take the boat.

  Tyler was staring at the half-sunken boat with dismay. “In that?”

  “We’ll bail it out and see how bad it is.”

  “But what about the searchers? No one will see us.”

  She picked up the two rusty cans she had found for bailing. She didn’t want to tell him the searchers might not even be looking in this weather. “First things first. Let’s see if the thing will float.”

  Miraculously, after fifteen minutes of bailing, the boat was bobbing high on the surface, with no water seeping through its seams. As she’d hoped, moisture had swollen and tightened the wood. She rummaged in the stage for a pair of oars and a paddle, and helped Tyler climb in. The boat rocked precariously, causing Tyler to clutch the gunwales with fear.

  “Can’t we just stay here until help comes?”

  She shook her head. “We’d be sitting ducks, and if I remember the map correctly, I think this bay may lead inland to the village of Croque.”

  “Croque. Dad and I visited there. Some grumpy old man wouldn’t sell us his boat.” His face twisted at the memory. “Not much in Croque.”

  “But there’s a road, and the search and rescue people will be patrolling the road.”

  Once she’d loaded all the supplies worth scavenging — fishing gear, a couple of cans they could use for cooking, a tarp, and a rusty old filleting knife that she planned to sharpen on a stone — she paused for one last look at the little village. She wondered again whether she should leave a message explaining where they were going, but she feared it would merely tip off their pursuers. The huge, whitewashed HELP sign she’d painted on the slope was bad enough. For a moment she dithered as she tried to think up a cryptic message that the searchers would understand, but their pursuers wouldn’t.

  A play on the word Croque? Or a reference to France? And then
a brainwave hit.

  “Just a minute,” she told Tyler as she headed back into the stage for the can of whitewash. For an added measure of misdirection, she carried it to the opposite end of the village and painted a message on the flat rocks along the shore. What did one frog say to the other?

  She was still laughing when she got into the boat. With any luck one of the police would have a brain and a sense of humour. As soon as they pushed off, the wind caught the boat, swung it broadside, and swept it out into the choppy water. Amanda’s summers as a young girl at her aunt’s cottage were a distant memory, but when she took the oars in her hands, the feel of the little rowboat she used to putter in came back to her in a rush.

  With powerful tugs she seized control of the boat and fought the wind to get closer to shore. As they inched their way down the bay, Amanda watched the village recede into the distance. Once they rounded a rocky point out of sight of the forlorn shacks, another bay opened up before her. Forests pressed in, and more jagged points of rock. Amanda kept a respectful distance from them as she scanned the cliff tops.

  “You’re my eyes!” she shouted to Tyler over the angry slap of the waves. “Keep a watch for rocks ahead, and also for any sign of Croque.”

  As she rowed, she kept twisting around to assess sky. A dense mist swirled over the mountains farther inland in what she assumed — hoped— was the west. Not fog, she prayed. We can’t afford to get caught in the fog.

  Every foot of progress was hard fought against the wind, but she couldn’t stop to rest without being blown backwards again. After what felt like an eternity, her back ached, her arms shook like jelly, and the blisters on her palms from the rough oars had begun to bleed. As she rounded yet another point, she twisted around to look ahead at the new vista. More forest, more rock.

  Where the fuck was Croque?

  She ran the boat ashore on a small gravel beach, waking Tyler with a start. He had curled up in the bottom of the boat, dozing, and he bolted upright in alarm.

  “What are we doing?”

  She jumped ashore and stretched her stiff back. “I need to wrap my hands. Let’s have a food break.”

  She handed him a little of the fish she had cooked that morning and poured some water into a jar. While he ate, she soaked her stinging hands in the cold salt water and rinsed out some rags to wrap them. Help would have to come soon, before infection set in. Exhaustion and pain robbed her of appetite, but she wandered a little along the shore to see whether she could detect any signs of habitation. As she walked, she thought she heard a crashing sound in the forest up the steep bank. She froze to listen. Another crack. The swish of leaves.

  Her whole body quivered. Rescuers? Killers? She didn’t dare call out. The crashing sound came nearer. She saw a flash of movement through the trees racing toward her. In panic, she glanced back at Tyler, who sat in the boat, completely exposed to danger. She turned to run back to him just as a moving blur burst through the underbrush and leaped on her.

  Red fur, squirming, wagging, and yelping with joy as a wet tongue covered her face in kisses.

  She burst into tears and hugged Kaylee to her. Her heart swelled with joy. For a moment she forgot all danger and pain as she turned around.

  “Tyler, look!”

  Something whizzed past her head. An instant later, a rifle shot cracked the air.

  “Tyler!” she screamed. Ducking low, she raced along the shore with Kaylee at her heels, limping, Amanda noticed with alarm, from a blood-encrusted wound on her hip. Another shot. Amanda scrambled faster. A third whizzed by just as she reached the boat. Shielding Tyler with her body, she tried to tug him out of the boat. He was unharmed, but wide-eyed with fear as he struggled to get up. Another shot spat the bottom of the boat. Luckily the guys weren’t crack shots. Bastards!

  She searched frantically along the shore, but there was no place to hide. No way to escape. Out on the water, they would be easy targets, but with Tyler’s injury they couldn’t possibly outrun the killers on land.

  A growl bubbled deep in Kaylee’s throat. Slow, deliberate footsteps swished through the leaves, and Amanda peered up the embankment to see a trio of men moving toward them through the tangled woods. She saw their legs first, then their ragged jackets, and finally the rifle. Pointed straight at her head.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Matthew Goderich was on the phone, making yet another futile effort to reach Sheri Cousins in Grand Falls, when he glanced out Casey’s window and spotted her driving past the house. He slammed the phone down and raced outside.

  She was driving an ancient Cavalier that threatened to disintegrate as it rattled along toward the harbour. She must have seen him chasing her because she pulled over and climbed out.

  He had only met Sheri Cousins once, when Phil had been home from Nigeria barely a month and Matthew had gone to Grand Falls for a follow-up interview. She’d struck him as a capable, no-nonsense woman, none too pleased with the public airing of her husband’s struggles. Today she’d done her best with makeup and a styling brush, but she looked as if the past week had dragged her through the thickets of hell. Deep charcoal bruises circled her eyes, which searched his with the hope of the desperate.

  “Do you know anything? They won’t tell me anything!”

  “Sheri, you know Phil is —”

  “Dead. Yes, I know that. They just had me identify his body.” She shook her head impatiently. “But what about Tyler? Where’s Tyler?”

  “Still missing.” Rain was threatening, so he slipped an arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go inside where we can talk.”

  “Fuck you, Goderich, I don’t want a goddamn interview! I want my son. Goddamn it! How dare he?”

  He eyed her warily. “Who?”

  “Phil!” She checked herself. “I’m just so angry, I don’t know at whom. God, maybe? Is this some goddamn big punishment He’s decided to lay on me?”

  He wanted to keep her talking. The woman was trembling like a volcano about to erupt, and it might do her some good to release the molten rage. Not to mention that he might get some excellent material for the piece he was writing. As the first national-calibre reporter on the scene, he’d persuaded the Canadian Press wire service to pick up not only his ongoing blog updates, but also a longer background feature.

  But the Mounties were being their usual tight-assed, uncooperative selves, and so far he had few details on Phil’s death itself, let alone the missing-persons search. He had managed to glean, from a disgruntled civilian ground SAR member who worked in the local convenience-store-cum-post-office, that the civilian team had been blocked from the search for Amanda and Tyler because of an ongoing threat from persons unknown. From which she, and Matthew, had deduced that there was still a killer at large.

  Which meant that Phil had not died by accident or suicide. Someone had killed him.

  As if Sheri could read his mind, she shook her arm free. “Don’t print that, Matthew! Help me. I know you care about Phil. What do you know about Tyler?”

  “They have a massive search out for him. Police combing the woods, eyes in the sky, police dogs tracking him from the site of Phil’s body, although I gather that’s proving difficult because dogs can only follow the freshest scent. So the police don’t know whether they’re tracking Tyler or Amanda.”

  “Amanda!” Sheri’s rage bubbled up again. “This is her fucking fault in the first place. If she hadn’t signed on for Nigeria —”

  “That’s a long way back, Sheri.”

  “Is it? It’s a chain reaction, don’t you see? If she hadn’t gone, he wouldn’t have gone, and they would never have met those fucking Islamic thugs, and Phil and Amanda wouldn’t have made this blood pact to heal each other. Which ended here!” She flung her hand to encompass the ocean. “With Phil dead and my son in jeopardy.”

  “Amanda is taking care of him.”

  “Is she? Isn’t t
hat just peachy! How do you know that?”

  “Because she hasn’t come back. And if anyone can keep Tyler safe, it’s her.”

  Sheri stared out toward the harbour, where a handful of locals worked on their boats and stages. Despite the ominous clouds, pickup trucks trundled up and down the harbour road as people went about their daily chores. Phil’s body had been taken away, the ERT team was out in the field, and the village had returned to some semblance of normal. An alert and watchful normal. Sheri’s jaw worked as she fought to bring her storm of emotions under control.

  “You know she will,” Matthew added quietly.

  “Amanda told me to start a Facebook page for them, so I did. Now Tyler is all over the goddamn Internet, and someone started another one — Prayers for Tyler. That’s my son, not some new fad!”

  Matthew nodded his sympathy, deciding now might not be the best time to mention his own blog. “Every little bit helps, Sheri,” was all he said. “That’s what matters.”

  “He must be so scared,” she whispered, tears crowding in. “I hope he didn’t see his father die. I hope Phil shielded him at least from that.”

  Matthew didn’t know how to counter that, so he didn’t try. “Did they tell you how he died?”

  She shook her head. “I only saw his face. He looked peaceful. No bullet hole to the temple, but I … I assume he killed himself.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She frowned. “Accident?”

  Matthew feared he might have gone too far. He wanted to ask whether she had any theories about who would kill him, but he risked unleashing a further, futile wave of panic and terror once she realized Tyler was out there in the sights of a killer.