In the Barren Ground

by Loreth Anne White

  The new Mountie who has come to town to mess with the natural order of things.

  The lights inside the station shine warm squares onto the snow outside. The nurse is still in there. Curiosity twists through the Watcher. What’s going on inside? Is the Mountie hurt? Is it her prisoner who needs the nurse?

  A sentence comes to mind:

  … as Cromwell regarded Moreau, he witnessed the moment the man knew he was prey …

  Prey.

  It’s always more deliciously thrilling when a creature becomes cognizant of the fact it’s being tracked, followed, hunted by something dark and unseen in the shadows. Something carnivorous, intent, and punishing.

  The hairs on the Watcher’s arms rise at this thought. Arousal stirs low and hot in the groin. Hunger, the heat of desire, burns into the belly. The anticipation of blood tingles upon the tongue … No! Too soon, too soon, not supposed to feel it again so soon … A slice of panic across the throat. Tightness in the brain. A buzzing. Closing in. Need air, need space, can’t feel this now … no no no …

  Only one way to stop it, only one way … punish, punish, punish …

  CHAPTER 15

  As Tana entered the office area with Addy she was struck by the aroma of food. Almost immediately she noticed the takeout cartons balanced precariously near the edge of the spare desk. O’Halloran.

  He’d been in here.

  Her gaze shot to the passage door. She’d left it ajar. The door to the small bunk room as well. For her dogs. Had he heard them talking? About her baby?

  Why sneak out without yelling his presence, or something? He’d been so quiet. Her dogs hadn’t even barked.

  Unease curled through her.

  “Looks like he left one for you,” she said to Addy as she peeled the lid off a container. Her stomach tightened in hunger at the fragrant scent. Soup. Chock-full of vegetables. “Would you like some?”

  “Thanks, but no,” Addy said. “I need sleep. Got early appointments tomorrow.” She took her coat from the row of hooks near the door, shrugged into it, and pulled on her mitts.

  “Come see me for an ultrasound next week. I can let you know the sex of the baby, if you want.”

  Something in Tana went cold. Did she want to know yet? It made things even more real. She nodded. “Thanks. For … everything.”

  “Anytime. You know where to find me.” Addy reached for the door handle.

  “Tell me something,” Tana said quickly. “How long have you been in town?”

  “In Twin Rivers? Too long. Seven years total now.”

  “So you remember when the cop Elliot Novak’s daughter was mauled to death? And when the student was mauled at the culture camp the year after?”

  Addy’s gaze locked with Tana’s. She was silent for several beats. The color of her complexion seemed to change. “You … don’t think—”

  “That they could be connected? How could they? The animals were shot in both cases, right?”

  The look in Addy’s features darkened. Curiosity, unease, deepened in Tana.

  “Does he ever come into town?” she said.

  “Elliot? Once or twice, maybe two years ago. Then not again, as far as I’ve heard.” Wind gusted outside, casting bits of ice from the trees against the windowpanes.

  “But he’s still out there, still alive?”

  “He was hardly alive when he first went into the bush, Tana. A hollowed-out husk, a cadaverous shadow of himself, suffering from a severe form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Made worse for the isolation and bad nutrition. He looks terrible, too. He lost some of his extremities to frostbite—part of his nose, ends of several fingers and toes. That day he was brought back into town with the savaged body of his daughter, he … he was blackened by frozen flesh and of unsound mind. If he’s surviving out there, he’s not a normal man. He can’t be.”

  Wind gusted louder, the sound of ice ticking against the windows like little rodent nails seeking a way in.

  “Why do you want to know?” Addy said.

  “I thought I might talk to him.”

  “But you said these attacks cannot possibly be connected.”

  “I was also told that Elliot wasn’t convinced it was wolves.”

  Addy stared. Wind rose to a pitched whistle outside. Flames in the stove flickered. “Sometimes,” Addy said quietly, “when the pain of grief is too great, the human mind seeks other avenues. Denial. Blame. A need to punish something external. Especially if there is guilt involved. I think that might have been why Elliot wanted so badly to believe there might be someone he could punish for what happened.”

  “Why was there guilt involved?”

  “For not having been able to protect his child.” She paused. “It drove him mad, Tana, looking to blame a monster.” She turned the door handle, opened the door. Icy air washed in. “This place has a way of doing that—driving people mad, if you’re not careful.”

  “You’ve been out here long enough and you’re fine.”

  Addy held her eyes. “Am I?”

  She stepped out and closed the door behind her.

  Tana went over and locked it behind the nurse. She moved to the window. Through the crystals of frost forming over the glass, she watched Addy pulling up her fur-ruffed hood, and stepping into the snow. Her hooded figure moved down the street. Under the faint, eerie, green-and-yellow light that waved above the treetops, the image brought a fairy-tale figure to mind. A red riding hood. A wizard or witch.

  A midwife crone.

  Tana thought of what Addy had said. About being a mother. Her mind went to the dead wolf with swollen teats, and she imagined the pups crying in their den tonight. She wondered if they’d be alive come morning, or if some carnivore would be drawn by their plaintive, hungry calls, and kill them under the haunting light of the aurora borealis.

  She thought of Apodaca’s and Sanjit’s mothers. They would have received word of the attack and deaths of their children by now. Tana rubbed her arms. Life wasn’t fair.

  As she was about to turn away from the window, a shadow moved across the street. Tana leaned quickly forward, rubbed off the frost.

  Nothing.

  She watched the empty street a while, a strange cold feathering into her bones.

  Tuesday, November 6. Day length: 7:43:25 hours.

  “Morning, Jamie,” Tana said as she carried a tray of breakfast into the cell wing.

  He was seated on the edge of the bunk, his big feet planted square on the floor. Slowly, he turned his head and faced her. But he didn’t seem to see her. His eyes were empty black pools. An uneasiness filled Tana as she regarded his features.

  “Want some breakfast? I’m going to unlock the door and come in, okay?”

  Silence.

  Tana unlocked the cell door, entered with a tray that contained hot cereal and a mug of coffee. She set the tray on the bottom end of the bunk. Dragging over a chair, she seated herself opposite him. Her dogs lay watchful at the threshold of the open cell door.

  “The oatmeal will make you feel better,” she said.

  But he remained silent, seemingly disconnected from the world, and she wondered if this was an aftereffect of whatever narcotic was in the mushroom tea he’d allegedly consumed.

  Tana had risen around 5:00 a.m. The wind had died and the air had gone so still that the sudden and heavy sense of silence had woken her—like the pressurized calm that came before a storm. She’d let her dogs out, showered, and downloaded her photographs from the wolf-mauling scene. After printing out an image of the silver and jade cuff that Apodaca had been wearing, Tana fed Max and Toyon while listening to the weather report on the radio and making oatmeal on the small stove upstairs. A series of massive storm fronts were on their way—huge amounts of snowfall and fog expected within the next forty-eight hours. An alert had been issued for their area.

  Before going to bed last night, she’d checked the station database and found that while TwoDove had spent nights in the drunk tank before, and he’d been arres
ted after becoming belligerent at a protest to blockade the work of the ice road surveyors last spring, he’d not been charged. He had no criminal record on file. What had piqued her interest, however, were the police photos on file taken at the blockade. They showed that Selena Apodaca and Caleb Peters were present with Jamie TwoDove that day. Then again, half the village, it seemed, had also been at the blockade, if not protesting, just there to watch and warm themselves beside barrels roaring with flames.

  She’d also searched the office database for Cameron “Crash” O’Halloran, and found zip on him, in spite of his obvious connections to local bootlegging. She’d Googled him, too, curious about where he was from, what he was doing here. She suspected he was going to be a thorn in her law-enforcement side. But she’d found nothing at all on him apart from a small mention on a hunting blog written by a guy who’d been a member of a group that had stayed at Tchliko Lodge last winter. O’Halloran appeared to be a cipher, which deepened her intrigue. And her suspicion.

  From her pocket, Tana produced the print of Apodaca’s cuff. She held it out to Jamie.

  “Looks like one of your designs,” she said.

  Jamie’s eyes lifted slowly, and fixed on the image of the cuff. A shadow seemed to pass under his skin. The temperature inside the cell fell a few degrees. He dropped his head, looked down at his hands resting on his knees. Big hands. Cut and bruised from the fight, and stained red where Addy had applied disinfectant and antibacterial medication.

  “You gave Selena this bracelet, didn’t you, Jamie? There’s an inscription along the inside. See here? It says, To Selena, with love, JT. That’s you, Jamie TwoDove, isn’t it?”

  He swallowed and a tightness overcame his face. “That her blood?” His voice was raw.

  Tana inhaled. “I’m sorry for your loss, Jamie.”

  His eyes glistened. He looked up at the tiny window above the bunk. Behind the bars the day was dawning bleak and cold and gray.

  “I was going to come and talk to you, to let you know. But you were already at the Red Moose. You’d already heard what happened.”

  He nodded.

  “Had you and Selena been seeing each other for long?”

  Silence.

  Tana cleared her throat. “What happened at the Red Moose, Jamie?”

  His mouth flattened.

  “Did you start the fight?”

  Silence.

  “Look, you need to give me something here, because I need to file a report, and I’d prefer not to have to charge you, given the circumstances with Selena.”

  “I don’t remember what happened.”

  “You attacked Caleb Peters—why?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t remember.”

  She shifted in her chair, damn vest pinching her thickening midriff again. She wondered when the new, larger one that she’d ordered would arrive. Better come before the storms or she’d be stuck in this straightjacket for a while. Addy’s words filtered through her brain.

  … you might be compelled to take a kick, or a bullet, but you’ve got another life to think about now. A little civilian life …

  She cleared her throat. “Tell me about bones, Jamie. What do you know about old bones?”

  His eyes flashed up. Life burned suddenly into his dark face. The pulse at his smooth-skinned neck fluttered like a little mouse heart.

  “I don’t know nothing about bones.”

  “Last night you said some things about bones, Jamie. You said Selena had sinned. That she’d messed with the ‘lonely ones,’ or ‘lovely bones.’ You said that you told Caleb it was ‘bad shit.’”

  Silence.

  “What did you mean when you said ‘they’ took Selena away to the ‘dark side’?”

  He glanced away, his skin beginning to show a sheen of perspiration.

  “You and Caleb close friends?”

  Nothing.

  “I saw photos of you and him together, with Selena at that blockade. You looked like a close group.”

  He swallowed hard and scratched slightly at the knee of his jeans with his right thumb.

  Tana scrubbed her brow. “You see, Jamie, here’s what’s puzzling me—and we’ll know more once the forensics guys have looked at things, because that’s what happens next. With any unusual death, there is a postmortem, and various scientific experts weigh in to try and understand what happened. But I found bones out there with Selena’s body. And they looked like old bones. I was thinking maybe the attack just happened to occur where bones lay, but then you go ranting about bones and Selena last night.” She paused and let that hang in the silence.

  People underestimated the power of silence, and how it could compel someone to speak, to fill it.

  But while TwoDove’s pupils shrank inside his dark irises, he gave nothing.

  “The forensics guys will be able to say exactly how old those bones are. DNA in the bones could even tell who they belonged to, whether they’re related to someone in town.” She leaned forward. “I think you know something about those bones, Jamie.”

  “I don’t remember nothing, okay?” he said. “Had too much to drink. I was upset.”

  She came to her feet. “Caleb Peters might know something about bones, eh? I’ll ask him.”

  He would no longer meet her eyes.

  “Maybe Marcie Della or Chief Peters knows something—maybe some people went missing many years ago, and died at the north tip of Ice Lake. Maybe there’s an old burial site out there.”

  He paled. A muscle flickered along his jaw. Marcie and Chief Peters moved a little higher up Tana’s agenda.

  “Eat up,” she said. “Get something warm into you. I’m going to write you up, then you’ll be free to go. I’ll have a word with Viktor who owns the Red Moose, see if he’s okay with you working off some of the damages. I’d prefer to issue you a warning this time, okay, but Viktor Baroshkov has to agree not to press charges.”

  He sat there. Unmoving. A statue.

  But as she reached the cell door, he muttered something.

  She turned. “What was that?”

  He raised his eyes. “Wasn’t wolves.”

  Her pulse quickened. “What do you mean?”

  “Wasn’t the wolves that killed her.”

  “What was it, then?”

  “The soul eaters. The spirits of wild places. They scrape the soul—your heart—right out of your chest. Take your eyes so you can’t see in the afterlife.”

  The image of Apodaca’s body slammed through her. The gleaming rib cage in wet, red flesh. The missing heart. Eyes. She swallowed.

  CHAPTER 16

  Tana put down the phone and scrubbed her hands hard over her face, making her skin raw. Anger stabbed at her brain.

  She’d just called her superior in Yellowknife, Sergeant Leon Keelan, to press upon him the immediate need for replacement staff and a new pilot. Reception had been cool. Sarge Keelan was a close friend of Staff Sergeant Garth Cutter. Married with three kids, Cutter was highly placed in the federal force, his policing career on a fast track. He’d set his sights high and was after a commissioned post, and beyond that, possibly a role with CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Tana knew all of this because she’d let him fuck her. Not just once, but several times, when they were both drunk. On each occasion Tana had been so wasted she could barely stand. Or think. And that’s the way she’d wanted it, because when she was sober, all she could think of was Jim. And how he’d taken his life. And why. And how she hadn’t seen it coming, and had done nothing to stop him. And he’d used her gun.

  And now Cutter was the father of her baby.

  A baby Jim had wanted. A baby she’d told Jim she didn’t want. Not yet. She was too young. Only twenty-four. She’d wanted to make detective first—that had been her goal. Cutter’s words swam into her head.

  Don’t the fuck embarrass me with this shit. Get rid of it. Promise me you’ll get rid of it, and get your aboriginal ass the hell out of town. Because you’re mud on this force now, if I
have anything to do with it … like mother like daughter, eh … the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree …

  Shame prickled her skin. Remorse. Fury. Frustration. A need to hurt herself, punish herself, do something exploded inside her. Tana pressed both palms flat on the metal desk, and inhaled deeply, slowly. Tentatively she moved her right hand, and placed it over her belly.

  Screw them, happy baby. It’s you and me now. Screw them all, because we’re going to do this … We’re going to turn history around. I’m going to be a good mom.

  And she’d do it in private—wouldn’t reveal who the father was, because as much as she’d like to nail Cutter’s ass to a wall, she had no intention of hurting Winnie Cutter, his wife, or their kids. This was not their fault. This was her own fault. This was her shame. She’d slept with a married man. A man she had fucking zero respect for, because he’d shown himself to be a racist, adulterous, misogynistic prick, and he’d used her. Just like all the men who’d used her mother, and Tana before this. And she couldn’t blame anyone but herself for that. She’d allowed it—maybe she’d even wanted it as a form of self-hatred. But she knew Garth Cutter for the man he really was. She knew the face he hid from the public, and she’d bet her life that she was not his first affair, as sick and sordid as it had been.

  Leon Keelan knew, too.

  And this was why—she was certain of it—they’d been so keen to send her up here to nearly the Arctic Circle, to the Canadian policing equivalent of the Siberian salt mines, under the pretense that it was because she was part Dogrib, and that the Twin Rivers settlement area needed someone of the north, who understood the culture. And she figured that whatever went wrong out here now, or continued to go wrong, they were going to let her wallow. They were going to hold off sending resources as long as they reasonably could. They were going to set her up to fail. Cutter would like that. In fact he’d probably like her dead. She rubbed her face again.

  She would prove them wrong.

  She got up, poured a mug of tea from the pot she’d left warming atop the cast iron stove, added honey. She’d also phoned the coroner’s office, mentioning her specific interest in the extra bones, and had been told a full report following the autopsies and other forensic investigations would be forthcoming. She was the beat cop, the first responder who had simply secured the scene, and they were treating her as such.