In the Dark

by White, Loreth Anne

  In her mind’s eye she saw Estelle Marshall’s wild, white face as she ran screaming out of the liquor store. She saw Estelle dropping her bottle of chardonnay, running into the road. She saw Estelle’s face—those eyes, those broken eyes—as she’d pleaded on CRTV news for someone who’d seen the blue BMW that had killed her son to come forward. As she’d sobbed and begged for whoever had taken her son’s little red backpack to do the right thing and approach the police.

  But no one did.

  No one seemed to have seen the blue BMW.

  The BMW that Nathan had found damaged and parked in his garage with a missing license plate. And when Nathan saw the TV news, he knew. He asked Monica directly, and she’d been forced to tell him about Steven. That they’d been having an affair. How they’d been tipsy that afternoon. How they’d come back to the McNeill house to make love on the bed Monica shared with Nathan.

  And Nathan had quietly taken the BMW in the night to a contact in Burnaby. The car never came back. It was fixed, he’d said. And it had been sold to a buyer in Alberta.

  The kitchen door swung open with a whoosh of dank, icy air.

  “Guys—” Steven stilled, hand on the doorknob, as he registered the looks on their faces. “What’re you doing? What’s going on?” he asked quietly.

  Nathan and Monica exchanged a glance.

  “It’s her,” Monica said quickly. “The mother. Stella is the mother of the dead boy you hit with my car. Bart is the one who fixed and sold my BMW. He’s the link—he could expose us all. We could all still go down for this.”

  Steven swallowed, glanced over his shoulder and through the window toward the others in the shed. “Do Stella and Bart know each other?” he asked.

  “I don’t see how they could,” whispered Nathan.

  “Steven!” Stella’s yell reached them from outside. They heard her coming over, her boots crunching through slush and stones. She appeared in the doorway, breathing hard. “Did you find Monica and—” She glanced from Steven to Monica to Nathan, frowned. “What are you guys doing?”

  “Nothing,” Monica said hurriedly, flustered. “Just . . . worried.”

  Stella observed them for a moment too long. “We need to move,” she said. “It’ll be dark again before long. We’ve got flashlights and headlamps, and some things we can use for weapons in the shed. You need to come and take your pick.”

  THE LODGE PARTY

  DEBORAH

  Deborah stepped farther back behind the wall that screened the kitchen from the great room. She’d come downstairs to boil some water. She was dehydrated from throwing up, and too afraid to drink what came out of the faucets without boiling it. Then she’d heard Monica and Nathan whispering. Then Steven coming in.

  As the kitchen door closed behind them, her heart stuttered so fast in her chest she thought she was going to have a heart attack.

  All the jagged pieces of this jigsaw puzzle were coming together, and what she saw terrified her.

  She waited until she was certain everyone had cleared out of the kitchen, then entered carefully.

  It was dark and spooky in here. Knives and cleaver and tenderizer all suddenly looked ominous. She moved slowly toward the window, her ankle feeling so much better. She peered outside.

  She could see them all gathered around a workbench in the open-sided shed, sharing among themselves cans of bear spray, an air horn, and knives. Bart was loading the gun and putting bullets into his pockets. Steven glanced toward the house, and she stepped back quickly, out of view.

  THE SEARCH

  CALLIE

  Callie guided her craft out into the choppy waters of Taheese Lake. As they rounded the point, the wind slammed her boat, and rain streamed over the windows screening the controls. Mason stood under the cover at the controls beside her. She idled her engine, waiting and watching for Oskar and his crew of three male SAR members and one female to exit the protected bay. As soon as they came around the point, Callie opened the throttle. As fast as the low visibility would allow, she bombed and bashed the prow of her craft into the small waves and sleety rain. In places, the clouds blew so thick over the water that she couldn’t even discern the mountain flanks that rose steeply on either side of the narrow body of water.

  “I see what you mean by the wind being funneled down this lake,” yelled Mason, holding on to his cap with one hand and the railing with the other.

  “What?”

  He repeated himself, louder.

  She laughed. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t get off on the exhilaration of this job. She loved the wind slicing cold against her face, the slap of rain, the resistance of waves against her prow. Every now and then she could glimpse the sweeping mountains, dense forests, black rocks, the vicious avalanche shunts littered with giant upended root balls and boulders. It was God’s country, in Callie’s mind. She lived to breathe in and appreciate the lethal majesty of it.

  Oskar followed with his bigger craft in her wake. After about forty minutes, she checked her instruments again. They’d covered a distance of about thirty kilometers from the boat launch. She slowed her craft. So did Oskar behind her. The noise of their engines changed as they chugged slowly forward into the low-visibility gloom. Callie couldn’t see Mount Warden or the north end of the lake, but she could sense it, something big and hulking behind the thick curtains of weather. “Should be here now,” she said to Mason.

  “I see it!” He pointed as the clouds parted.

  The lodge came into view suddenly, hunkering like a black creature in a clearing, hemmed in on either side with dense coniferous forest that fringed right up to the water’s edge. Windows glinted like eyes. The totem poles stood like warnings.

  Callie shook the sense of menace that seemed to curl in the shifting clouds around the place. She hadn’t been here since that time she’d come to climb the south face of Warden with Peter and a few other climbers. That had been more than four years ago. The place had always felt spooky, but never more so.

  They came up to the old dock. She nudged her craft up alongside the planks covered with moss and clots of slush. The dock creaked and sucked against the lapping waves. Oskar brought his boat up behind hers.

  There was no sign of activity on land.

  No smoke curled from the stone chimney. No lantern lights glowed inside. The only evidence that someone had been here was two ropes that had been tied to the dock. The ends dangled in the water.

  Callie nodded toward the ropes as she turned off the engine. “They look new.”

  Mason nodded.

  They took the hunting spotlights and flashlights from the crafts and disembarked in silence. While the SAR crew secured the boats, Mason crouched down on the wet dock and with gloved hands pulled the rope ends out of the water.

  Callie noticed immediately that the ends had been cut. She watched quietly as Mason took photographs of the rope ends while Oskar and the others started up toward the lodge, flashlight beams bouncing back at them in the fog.

  “Do you think that’s recent?” Callie nodded at the sliced rope ends as Mason came to his feet and surveyed the scene.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “The Beaver with the dead pilot had the same kind of ropes tied to the struts. Same evidence of cuts.”

  “So the aircraft could have been moored here and cut free?”

  “It’s certainly a working theory as of now.” He switched on his flashlight and panned it carefully across the wet planks. “Can you ask your guys to hold back for a minute?” he asked.

  Callie cursed inwardly as she saw how Oskar and the others had tracked up the slush on the dock.

  “Hoi!” she yelled into the mist. “Oskar! Guys! Hold back until RCMP gives the go!”

  Oskar waved his hand.

  Mason moved to the end of the tippy dock. He crouched down again. With his gloved hand he swished some of the slush aside. Callie saw what had attracted him—pink stains in the slush. Adrenaline hummed into her blood. She glanced toward the lodge. Oskar and the
guys were waiting near the totem poles. Oskar was scanning the ground with his spotlight. He was an ace man-tracker. He’d probably seen something, too.

  Mason shot more photos and came to his feet. “Let’s go take a look. As of now, this could all be a crime scene. I’d like your techs to stay back until my order. At all times.”

  “Understood.”

  She followed Mason up the narrow and overgrown path that led to the totem poles where the others waited.

  A creak sounded. Callie started and glanced up. The raven’s head and wings moved as the wind shifted direction. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. The loose top of the totem functioned like some primitive wind sock, yet Callie couldn’t shake the notion it was alive, and watching them. She was getting a really weird sixth-sense kind of warning about this place. And Callie trusted her gut feelings. They’d saved her life on more than one occasion in the wilderness in the past.

  What have those wooden raven’s eyes seen playing out here?

  When they reached the stairs that led up to the front porch, Mason held out his hand. “Stay back a minute. Wait here.”

  He drew his sidearm and moved carefully up the stairs. He banged on the door. “Hello! Anyone here?”

  Silence lay heavy as they all listened for a response. Nothing came, apart from the steady drumming of rain and the swishing of wind through the forest. Mason tried the handle. The door opened. He made a motion for them all to move to the side, off the path, out of a direct line with the door. They acquiesced, exchanging glances and watching as Mason pushed open the door with his foot, gun ready in both hands.

  “Hello! Anyone home?” he called again. He waited a second. “It’s Sergeant Mason Deniaud from Kluhane RCMP. I’m coming in!”

  He entered like a cop, weapon leading as he kept to one side of the door, then moved deftly to the other.

  He disappeared inside.

  They heard him calling out inside the lodge.

  “There was blood on the dock,” she whispered to Oskar.

  “You sure it’s blood?”

  “Possibly blood,” she corrected. But the victim, Jackie Blunt, had been stabbed somewhere, and Callie’s bet was on the stains being human blood.

  Oskar nodded as he continued to pan his spotlight through the gloomy twilight, surveying the ground around them. He pointed suddenly.

  “Over there,” he said quietly. “In the mud, along the berry scrub. Looks like prints.”

  She tented her hand over her eyes against the rain and peered into the mist. He was right. There were tracks of churned-up mud and slush near a gap in the brambles that led into the trees.

  Time ticked on while they waited for Mason. The clouds lowered. Rain came down more incessantly, pearling off their jackets and dripping from the bills of their caps. The darkness grew complete.

  “He’s taking his time,” Oskar said. “You think he’s okay?”

  Callie was growing worried. But then she saw a flashlight beam moving in one of the dark windows upstairs. “He’s up there.” She pointed.

  A few moments later, Mason reappeared in the doorway. The group tensed as he came quietly down to join them.

  “The place appears empty,” he said, holstering his weapon. “But they were here.”

  “You sure?” Callie asked.

  “For a couple of days, judging by tins and plates in the kitchen sink and on the dining table. They were sleeping in the rooms upstairs. Some belongings are still in the rooms, including a wallet with Jackie Blunt’s ID.”

  THE LODGE PARTY

  STEVEN

  Monday, October 26.

  Steven followed Monica and Nathan to the shed, but as Monica and Nathan went inside, something made Steven glance back toward the lodge.

  He stilled. She was there—her shape behind the rimed kitchen windowpanes. Deborah Strong. Watching.

  Deborah moved away quickly as she saw him looking.

  That woman was a quiet, strange sort. She made Steven uneasy. She was a watcher. She sucked things into her aura. A taker.

  Mist shifted in front of the kitchen windows, and a chill curled through him. A watcher watches . . . witnesses . . .

  He froze.

  Witness.

  The word hissed through his mind. His heart beat faster. Jackie Blunt’s words filled his head.

  I’ve seen Deborah before. I know that tattoo on her wrist. A swallow. I’ve seen that ink. And I’ve spoken to her. I know her voice . . . I have a memory for these things.

  Deborah’s response: You’re mistaken.

  He recalled the tension that had crackled between the two. They did know each other, thought Steven. And they’d not revealed it—chosen instead to hide it. Why? His mind went back to Monica’s shocking revelation that Stella was the mother of the boy he’d killed.

  His body heated as he stared at the dark lodge building and opaque windows. He recalled the eyes of the mother pleading on television. He knew Monica was right. It was her. Maybe on some subterranean level he’d seen it himself earlier, but his survival brain had not listened.

  Because he’d hit the child. He’d killed little Ezekiel Marshall.

  The memory of the thud shuddered through him.

  He’d not believed it possible when it happened. But he’d been over the limit. Distracted—Monica’s head in his lap, sucking his cock. Her giggling. Then the bam.

  Sweat prickled over his body despite the chill.

  He’d reversed. He’d checked to be certain, seen the blood, the child’s face . . . He’d panicked, hit the gas, squealed around the corner, sped off down a dark side street.

  But someone had witnessed what he’d done. A woman. She’d been standing on the corner in the rain, farther down the sidewalk from the stores, where it was quieter, darker. High-heeled boots, short skirt. Shiny black trench coat. Rain dripping from her umbrella. The trauma of the event had scored her image into his mind. A sex worker, he’d figured, who’d looked right into the car window—right at his face—her mouth a round O of horrified shock.

  The witness.

  As he’d sped around the corner, she’d run toward the fallen boy.

  But the witness had never come forward. No one knew what had happened to her, or whether she’d even existed. She’d had her own things to hide. She had looked at the boy, must have seen he was beyond repair, then had taken his backpack and the fallen, battered BMW front plate and fled the scene, too.

  The mother had seen the witness running off with the little red backpack. The mother had told the cops and the media there’d been a witness, and that she’d taken Ezekiel’s backpack. The mother had clearly not seen the woman pick up the battered license plate.

  The police had hunted for her. They’d put up notices on poles and made announcements in the media, calling for the possible witness to come forward. But nothing. And no one seemed to know about the plate.

  As time had passed, as Katie Colbourne had revealed the fact that Estelle Marshall had suffered bouts of “mental illness” and depression for which she’d sought private treatment, they’d all begun to think Estelle might have made up the witness. Especially under the stress of the hit-and-run incident that killed her boy.

  A witness watches.

  A cold, hard ball slid through his stomach into his bowels. The conversation with his lawyer—his fixer—snaked up from the depths of Steven’s memory.

  “I have someone, Steven. Ex-cop. Now a private investigator. He gets the job done. If anyone can retrieve that plate and silence that witness, he’s our man.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Best we don’t get into that information. Better to keep things compartmentalized in case things go pear-shaped. Less you know, less we all know, the better.”

  “But this PI will fix it?”

  “For a price.”

  “How?”

  “Again, the less you know, the less potential for blowback.”

  “So you mean . . . this witness, she’ll be paid off?”


  “Something like that.”

  Steven tried to breathe. He tried to think against the wildness of panic setting in, confusing him. It was all there. All the dots and links.

  Had Dan Whitlock been the PI? Had he in turn paid someone to put the screws to the witness?

  Could . . . just could . . . the witness have been Deborah Strong?

  No. No. Fuck no. This was all messing with his head. He was seeing links that were not there. His guilt, his fear, were making a monster in every corner.

  “Steven?”

  He gasped, spun around. The group—all of them—were watching him with weird looks on their faces, like he was mad or something.

  “Are you okay, man?” Bart asked.

  Monica’s words echoed in his skull.

  Bart. He is the connection, the proof. Between you and me and my damaged blue BMW that the police were hunting for.

  “Yeah, I . . . I’m fine.” He entered the dark, cobwebby shed. It looked like some kind of rural torture chamber, filled with implements and tools coated with dust and grime, and it smelled like sawdust and something he couldn’t identify. A big freezer was pushed up against the wall at the back, next to it a generator. On the shelves, gasoline cans with spouts.

  “Nothing in it,” said Bart, noticing Steven looking at the chest freezer. Bart opened the lid to demonstrate. “I suppose if we were here for days, we could hunt and store shit in here. It hooks up to the generator, and those gas cans are full.”

  Steven looked into Bart’s eyes. Then to the knife sheath still on his hip. Empty.

  I did jobs off the books, and accepted cash under the table to fix hot vehicles.

  Guys who fixed hot vehicles off the books were usually connected to people who stole vehicles. Criminals. Gangs. People like Bart sometimes kept records, photos, surveillance footage for leverage in case things went sideways. Could Bart have kept evidence that showed Nathan bringing him Monica’s damaged car? Could there exist old photographs of the BMW?

  The Vancouver news had been full of stories about the hit-and-run fourteen years earlier, full of calls for witnesses who might have seen a blue BMW with damage to the front. Bart had to have seen that news. He’d have known that the blue BMW he’d worked on for Nathan most likely had been involved. Surely there’d been some blood on the car, or even hair, or something else from the child?