“Dad, you can always reach me on my cell.”
“The police . . .”
“Tell the police that I’m on my way to Whatou Lake, and give them my cell phone number, please.”
“Good, good, I’ll do that. Will you call again when . . . ?”
“As soon as I can book a flight. And take care of Mom. She needs you.”
Kenneth Griffins whispered: “Savannah is with her. Otherwise I’m afraid she would have a nervous breakdown.”
There was a silence that neither interrupted.
Fran had been very close to Martha Griffins as a small child, maybe even closer than Tessa, Martha’s biological daughter. But Tessa had moved to Vancouver and Fran into the wilderness. Only Savannah, who like Fran had been a foster child, remained in the area.
Savannah, of all people, whom Tessa had never really trusted. Still didn’t.
“Keep an eye on the two of them,” she said to her father before saying good-bye.
2
“Fran has disappeared? What do the police think?”
Boyd Shenkar had been listening to her describe the events in Whatou Lake with great concentration, without interrupting. Tessa made every effort to keep in control, although her heart felt as soft as a sponge. Boyd did not waste time expressing his sympathy. No “Oh, that’s terrible” or “You must feel horrible.” No worried look and no meaningless words of compassion.
He seemed to be sitting calmly in his office chair, his relaxed hands in his lap.
But Tessa knew him well enough to know that he was taking her information very seriously. Boyd was often mistaken for a well-known dark-skinned Canadian news anchor, whose parents, just like his, had been from Trinidad. It was easy to underestimate him. At first glance he seemed to be a hedonist, with his Ermenegildo Zegna suits and his flair for other Italian designers.
Tessa knew he was a tough defender of justice, dressed in a dandy’s clothes. Time and again people judged him by his appearance, his weakness for expensive shoes, or the diamond in his right earlobe. Later on, in court, after he had won his case, the same people regretted their misjudgment. Boyd was almost fanatically devoted to his role as a defense attorney. In this moment, it was Fran that interested him most.
But Tessa couldn’t give him any answers. “I don’t know what it means that she’s disappeared.”
Too uneasy to sit, she leaned against the sideboard by the wall.
“Did someone phone Fran’s cell? Go through her laptop?”
She shook her head. “Fran doesn’t have a computer. There is no Internet in the backcountry. And no cell phone reception.”
Boyd wrinkled his forehead. “You’ve got to get there as fast as you can, Tessa. In a little place like Whatou Lake, they certainly won’t be prepared for such a big case.”
A big case.
That’s what she would have said, too, if there had been different victims. “I’ve got to find out if Fran is a suspect. Or if she’s also been killed and the police have not yet found her body.”
She pressed her middle fingers to her eyes to stop the tears.
Good god, it’s Fran I’m talking about!
Boyd stretched out his arms on his desk. “Or if she’s been abducted.”
She hadn’t dared to raise this possibility, but it was obvious. She pushed herself away from the sideboard like a swimmer from the starting blocks.
“How long can I stay away?”
“Just go and we’ll see about that later. Conny can take care of your cases. There aren’t any court cases coming up. And you can use your overtime hours. I’m sure you have plenty of them.”
She nodded. Sometimes her calendar had to be altered dramatically. That was nothing new. Regular routine in an office. But this was different. A family affair.
Boyd folded his arms. “You do understand that we cannot take this brief on. That’s clear, I hope?”
She did understand. That was against the rules they had agreed to before they became law partners.
“I will only advise my parents,” she said, in order to make it perfectly clear. “I just can’t leave them in the lurch.”
Boyd bent over the tabletop. “I have no worries about that.” He looked at her seriously. “You’ve made enemies there, and they could easily get some dumb ideas.”
“Do you think . . . ?”
He interrupted her. “I want to have you back here hale and hearty.” He pushed his chair back and got up. “Send me an email or give me a call whenever you can. And as far as the press is concerned, your trip is entirely private.”
Of course. The media. She had to warn her father. The journalists would dig everything up sooner or later. Her family had to be protected from it.
Tessa couldn’t get a flight for that evening. She informed her father that she would reach Whatou Lake the next morning. At the same time, she warned him not to talk to reporters or to deal with nosy phone calls.
Already in her office, she had found the first accounts online. They were only brief police reports: Four bodies have been found at a remote farm about one hundred kilometers from Whatou Lake. The cause of death was currently under investigation, said a police spokesperson in Whatou Lake. The identity of the victims will only be made public after all relatives have been informed. The RCMP spokesperson did not confirm rumors that the victims had been shot, and that one more person was being sought. The police will inform the public as soon as possible when new information becomes available.
On her way home, squashed in the packed SkyTrain, Tessa looked at her iPhone for any new reports. One news flash caught her eye: A team from the Special Division 76-A has been flown into Whatou Lake. Tessa knew about this elite group; they were responsible for investigating complicated homicides. She gasped so abruptly that the guy next to her in the train looked up questioningly.
In her apartment in the former Olympic Village, Tessa took off her shoes and settled into the soft chair that sat at the door to her balcony. The horror of it now flowed uninterrupted into her body. Her throat tightened up. Breena, Kayley, and Clyde dead. Shot. Hank, too. And Fran gone.
Her thoughts became unbearable.
She jumped up and went to the balcony door. A number of dragon boats shot across the still waters of False Creek. Arms and paddles rose and fell to the beat of a drummer in the bow of the boat. The kids and Hank would never see this race. Fran might not, either. Tessa began to tremble; she had to talk to somebody or she’d go crazy.
Her fingers numb, she dialed Dana Eckert’s number. Dana had been a social worker in Whatou Lake before she retired. Tessa had become a friend of hers after finishing her university studies in Vancouver and returning to her hometown. She could talk about many things with Dana that had to do with her work as a lawyer. And they’d kept in touch after Tessa had left Whatou Lake.
Dana answered immediately. “I thought it might be you,” she said. Her quiet, warm voice almost made Tessa cry.
“Dad called me. Tell me what you know. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”
“Me neither, Tessa. The only thing I know is that the kids and Hank have been found dead and that the police are searching for Fran.”
“What are they saying in Whatou Lake? Has Fran been abducted? Or . . .”
She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. It seemed that an evil spirit from the past had come back. Dana had stopped working five years ago, the same month Tessa left Whatou Lake. Back then Tessa just couldn’t get away fast enough from her hometown.
In her job, Dana had seen just about everything that apparently normal people were capable of doing: domestic violence, people in the throes of psychosis, rape, sexual assault and incest, animal torture, the terrors caused by drunken parents, drug abuse, fatal arson, and even children who had starved to death in their own homes.
Dana didn’t beat around the bush.
“Nobody thinks that Fran . . . would be capable of killing her family. But you and I know that the police will have to c
lear that up. I pray that they find her quickly. But I don't know if it’s right to hope . . . ?” Dana fell silent.
Tessa suspected there was something she could not say aloud.
“What about Hank?” she asked instead.
Dana sighed. “I don’t know him very well. But Fran . . . she never said anything bad about him. Did she say anything to you?”
“No . . . she was often alone with the children.”
Tessa remembered a satellite phone conversation from several months ago. Fran and Tessa had switched to French off and on to stop others from listening in on them. They had used snippets of French as teenagers when they had secrets to tell each other.
Tessa remembered that Fran was happy about Hank’s well-paid job at Watershed Lodge despite everything. It meant that they didn’t have any financial worries anymore. But Fran feared the lonely days ahead of her without him. “Come visit us in the summer and we can read books aloud to each other, and you can take photographs and go swimming in Beaver Lake with the kids.” Tessa could still hear the pleading in her voice. It was not how Fran had imagined life in the bush was going to be. She hadn’t imagined a life there without Hank.
“I assume that you’ll be coming here.” Dana simply stated it. She knew that Tessa had had good reasons for fleeing Whatou Lake, but she also knew that the daughter of Kenneth and Martha Griffins would not leave her family in the lurch when it really mattered.
Tessa’s mouth got dry. “It’ll kill my mom, Dana.”
“You’ve got to stay strong, girl. If you need a shoulder to cry on, come to me.”
Just then Tessa would have liked to leave it all behind. She said quickly, “I’ll call you when I’m there.”
For a few seconds there was static on the end of the phone line. Tessa heard only one thing more.
“Don’t wait until it’s too late.”
3
Twenty years earlier
After two hours of marching through the dark rainforest, they emerged into the light. Tessa had to squint. Her parents didn’t know where she was or who she was with. They would give her a talking-to. Or worse. After all, she was only fifteen.
But that didn’t bother Tessa at all. She was happy to be alone with Tsaytis Chelin at this place. The beach stretched in front of them in a white semicircle, like a descending moon.
Whitesand Bay.
Waves came rolling in on the flat, sandy beach, their white caps glittering in the sunlight. On the right side, sharp cliffs rose like terraces in the North Pacific. Tessa discovered three seals lying on the sun-drenched stones. Her eyes wandered over to the other side, where a brook flowed into the sea. She knew from her father that this was where grizzlies showed up, when the salmon spawned in the pools of water under hanging branches. But the bears fished in September, not June. She convinced herself that she had nothing to worry about.
She went slowly over to the sandy beach, trying not to scare off the sun-bathing seals. Tsaytis followed her silently. Not far away were the sacred final resting places of the Sitklat’l ancestors. The spirits of the dead, Tsaytis had told her, still resided there near the old graves.
They sat down on the warm sand, drank ginger ale, and bit into the sandwiches she had brought along.
“It’s good fishing here,” said Tsaytis. “A protected bay. Good for boats.” His black hair gleamed in the sun. Tsaytis was exactly the same age as she was. She liked a great deal about him. For instance, his faint accent when speaking in English, a reflection of his mother tongue, a noticeable lingering over consonants. She liked the way he moved, limber as a mountain lion, and even the fact that he hardly ever smiled but let his eyes do the talking. She loved his eyes, which shone like amber, the clearly defined lips, and the contours of his dark face. His shoulder-length black hair fell over his forehead. She particularly liked the fact that a little bit of him belonged to her.
Her parents had taken in Tsaytis for half a year. The school on the Sitklat’l reserve on Telt-shaa Island had burned down and had to be replaced. The older kids were sent to Whatou Lake because they had to take entrance exams in order to continue on to college. Tsaytis’s father, Chief Doug Chelin, knew Tessa’s father well. And so it was that the chief’s son moved into the Griffins household. Tsaytis went to the same classes as Tessa, and pretty soon they were hanging out together. Tessa didn’t care that other students teased her. What really got on her nerves was the fact that Jenny Dole was also interested in Tsaytis.
Jenny was the best-looking girl in the class, a fashion trendsetter, the princess in the annual Whatou Lake parade. She was also the star of the local cheerleading team. Her hair glittered white-blond, her blue eyes had long lashes, she was the first in their class to use mascara. In addition, she had long, thin legs like hockey sticks. She wasn’t much focused on school, but she liked sports and dancing.
And she liked competing against Tessa.
4
The Twin Otter droned like a prehistoric bulldozer.
Tessa had almost forgotten how noisy these machines were and regretted that she didn’t have her earplugs in her hand luggage. A miner who had been visiting relatives in Salmon Arm was snoring next to her. He had gotten up even earlier than she had.
The morning fog began to lift over the mountain range beneath her, a massive pile of stone along the coast where rain clouds often let loose like overripe pustules. The Twin Otter flew over fjords and small islands. Dark and steely, the water in the North Pacific shimmered. The small plane was gradually descending. Through the window Tessa could recognize the layout of the coast. A stony beach came into view, gradually turning to light-colored sand. Behind it there was a bright green strip of vegetation providing a stunning contrast to the dark pine forest. Whitesand Bay. The view of it took Tessa’s breath away. All these years she had tried to forget this unhappy place. But now it was there again.
The screams. The horrifying sounds that come with the fear of death.
Then awful silence.
She had never returned to Whitesand Bay since that afternoon. She hoped that she would never see that goddamned place again. Now she couldn’t turn her eyes away from it.
Something bright was shining in the morning light. A tall white cross.
On it, in dark letters, was a name forever burned into her memory.
Jenny Dole.
The young man next to her stirred. He rubbed his eyes. “Are we there already?”
“Too late for anything else,” Tessa answered.
Her father stood with crossed arms on the edge of the landing field, to which mere mortals were forbidden access. Kenneth Griffins could allow himself many privileges because he had been the highly respected and only doctor in Whatou Lake for a long time.
He spread out his arms when she ran to him. She let herself fall into them and didn’t understand at this moment why she always put off coming for a visit.
“I’m so happy that you’re here,” her father said. Tessa looked in his face and instinctively realized that it would be up to her to embrace and comfort him. He looked like a broken man. She felt a sharp pain in her chest. This was only the beginning. Holding back her tears, she adopted a serious tone.
“Come on. Let’s go get my stuff and drive home as fast as possible.”
In the small arrivals room, people were already looking curiously at her. The news of her return will spread like wildfire. She steered her way through the room without making eye contact with anyone. Outside, her father’s ruby-colored Nissan Pathfinder waited.
“Do you want me to drive?” she suggested, and to her amazement he agreed. The approximately three hundred houses of Whatou Lake were clustered around a flat piece of land a glacier had carved out of the mountain many thousands of years ago. The valley was two kilometers wide and stretched out into the interior, where it became even narrower. Kenneth Griffins preferred to live on the edge of town. Unlike most of the inhabitants of Whatou Lake, who chose a life near to neighbors, as if they were looking for protectio
n from the mountains, which dominated everything.
Tessa drove the Pathfinder across a bridge to the other side of the river, which snaked its way for many kilometers through the valley before emptying itself into the Pacific. When she turned onto the main street of Whatou Lake, her father mumbled to her: “Sometime today I have to identify them.”
“You mean . . .” She avoided a banged-up pickup that had turned without signaling.
“The bodies,” said her father. “They are now in the hospital.”
“Who did . . . ?”
“They handed it to Dr. Fletcher.” Her father fumbled with the seat belt. “No doubt it’ll be too much for him.”
“Dad, that’s not fair. Dr. Fletcher . . .”
“They’re flying in a medical expert today from Vancouver. And some RCMP people. A sergeant will be in charge.”
“That’s normal, Dad. This isn’t a case for regular police.”
A big case.
“Fran has nothing to do with the . . . she has nothing to do with it. The rumors are already circling, like vultures . . .”
Tessa had to slam on the brakes. A red light. Two years ago, there were no traffic lights. Other than that, Whatou Lake hadn’t changed much, as she could see from inside the car. Two churches, a bank, a laundromat, a Tim Hortons, a pub, a supermarket, a lumberyard, a gas station that doubled as a post office, a clinic, and a funeral parlor. Some of the stores along the main street had colorful new aluminum facades. Color had reached Whatou Lake. Tessa discovered a new store, a florist’s. Just what they didn’t need.
And now a violent, brutal crime had happened.
“Are they looking for Fran?” Tessa asked.
“Yes, it was even on TV. A public appeal. We had to supply the police with a photo.”
They drove by the police station, which seemed to be strangely empty.
There was not even a police car standing in front of the building. She withstood the temptation to stop and storm into the building.
MURDEROUS MORNING: A heart-stopping crime novel with a stunning end. Page 2
