In the Barren Ground

by Loreth Anne White

  CHAPTER 26

  Wednesday, November 7. Day length: 7:37:40 hours.

  Tana woke with a start. Hot. Wind was wailing, snow thickening against the window. The plastic taped over the broken pane made a tic tic tic sound. Disoriented, she sat up. She was on the floor … her dogs?

  “Max? Toyon?” she whispered, shaking them. Both her pooches opened their eyes. Max lifted his head, and Toyon thumped the tip of his tail. Tears of relief burned into her eyes as she stroked them. Their muscle tremors had quieted, no more drool. She lifted their lips. Their gums looked brighter. Oh, God, they were going to be okay. “You are,” she whispered to them. “You will be fine. You’ll see—you’ll feel even stronger tomorrow.”

  Crash?

  She looked around. The room glowed a soft orange from the fire. A light came from the interview room. The door to the room was open. Quickly, she pushed herself to her feet. Stiff and still hurting from the fight at the Red Moose, she made her way to the door on socked feet, entered.

  She stilled.

  He stood in front of her whiteboard, up close, examining the lines she’d made linking photos, what she’d written, his own name up there. He’d removed his flannel shirt and wore a white tee, jeans. A big-ass hunting knife was sheathed at his hip. The form-fitting fabric of his shirt accentuated his musculature, his simmering, latent strength. The small room underscored his height. But her focus was drawn to the tattoos down his arms. On his left bicep dark ink depicted a big fist holding a trident that speared three small skulls. On his right arm a pair of handcuffs was tattooed.

  Her heart started to race.

  Prison tats. Gang ink.

  He tensed. Sensing her, he turned slowly.

  His face looked different. Something in his eyes had darkened, and the look in them made her fight taking a step backward.

  The RCMP had run a course for all the cops back in Yellowknife when the Devil’s Angels started to infiltrate the diamond industry there. Diamonds were the cleanest currency for organized crime, terrorism. The emblem of the Devil’s Angels was the speared trident. A fist grasping a trident with skulls upon the tips had to be earned. It was like a patch. It meant access had been granted to the highest levels of a chapter, and to gain entry, a DA member had to kill someone, or hurt them very seriously. Handcuffs often signified time served.

  Fear fingered into her chest.

  “Get out,” she said.

  “What is this?” he said.

  “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  He eyed her, unsmiling. Her gaze flickered to his name on the board, what she’d written under it.

  Owns red AeroStar. Heather MacAllistair saw a red AeroStar near scene around possible time of deaths. Sturmann-Taylor alibi? O’Halloran was in the woods near Regan Novak mauling site—first on scene. In a position to compromise evidence. Where was he when Smithers was killed? She could now add, member of organized crime chapter? Killer? Ex-con?

  “You’re conducting a homicide investigation.” He went to the table where the other glossy photos were scattered, the autopsy reports. He picked up the pathologist report on the Dakota Smithers case, started to read. Nerves whispered through Tana.

  “O’Halloran,” she said, “put that down, and get out of this room.”

  “Vanilla.” He looked up. “I didn’t know there were minute traces of vanilla and fish blood on Dakota Smithers’s body.”

  She swallowed, her hand automatically going to position near her sidearm, even as she realized it wasn’t there. She’d taken off her duty belt and vest. No gun. He had a knife.

  “They’d been cleaning fish that morning,” she said. “And making vanilla-scented tallow candles.”

  “Vanilla and fish blood is what Raj and Selena added to their lure.” He pointed to images of their ravaged bodies. “In these photos that you took here, what’s this dark stuff on the bodies?”

  “They were carrying lure, working with it. Could have gotten it onto their bodies during the attack.”

  He turned back to the whiteboard. “And bones,” he said quietly, as if to himself. “Old bones. And those claw marks, the patterns of predation, the blunt force trauma at the base of the skulls—”

  “It could just be coincidence,” she said. “Smithers could have fallen off her sled and rolled down that ravine. The fall could have killed her, or she might have been severely injured, and then the animals got to her. Apodaca and Sanjit were working with large-carnivore attractant. There were human-habituated wolves in the area. It could—”

  He spun around. “I never saw, or knew any of this about Dakota. I was on the outside. I just knew that the kid had been mauled by wolves or a bear. It happens. I only saw Regan’s body. That was a weird case. But now … coupled with this—” He gestured to the images of Apodaca and Sanjit. “The similarities on these remains, the dates of deaths, all during the first days of November, all on the cusp of bad weather that would seriously hamper an early search, giving time for scavengers to destroy evidence. The regularity of those four claw marks, the missing eyes, heart, vanilla, fish blood.”

  Tana stared at him. He consumed space, air. A vibrating intensity hummed around what he’d just voiced. His words had breathed life into what she didn’t even want to articulate, making it more real. More stark. More terrifying.

  Her gaze warred with his. “I need you to get out of here, O’Halloran.”

  “This could be the work of a madman, Tana. A bizarre, ritualistic serial murderer working in remote locations and using wild animals to cover his work.”

  “It could also be coincidence.”

  “One thing you don’t have up there is the inukshuk I saw where Regan died. No one took a photo of that. But I was there. I saw it. It was constructed in the same fashion as these other two.” He tapped the photos on her board. “And the long arm of the inukshuk pointed to the copse where I found Elliot Novak cradling the headless, gutted corpse of his daughter.”

  She swallowed, her attention returning to his tats. He was a criminal. A dangerous one who’d done time. She had to find a calm way to remove him from this room, and this police station.

  “And those words,” he said quietly, holding her eyes. “That poem, For, in the Barrens of the soul, monsters take toll … I’ve seen that line before.”

  “Where?”

  “A book.”

  “What book?”

  “At Tchliko Lodge. In Alan Sturmann-Taylor’s library. Words on one page, an ink drawing of a monster on the other. It was written by a man who hunts each year with Sturmann-Taylor’s outfit. He stays there part of each year to edit his novels. He sets them here, in the Barrens.” He paused. “Horror novels.”

  Her mouth turned dry.

  “Have you informed major crimes?” he said. “Are they sending people out?”

  His intensity, his keen interest, his degree of comfort while faced with these gruesome autopsy photos of real people, his tats, the rumors in town that he’d killed a man, his pattern of thinking, terminology—it all set warning bells clanging. He’d had opportunity in each of those deaths on the board. He’d been there—with Regan and Elliot Novak, in the woods. It was possibly his chopper that had been parked on the other side of the cliff from where Apodaca and Sanjit were slain. He had access to carnivore lure on TwoDove’s ranch. He knew the work patterns of the biologists. He knew that poem. He could be sleeping with Mindy.

  For all she knew O’Halloran could have poisoned her dogs, given them the tainted bones on his way into the diner, setting it up just so that he could save them, gain her trust. He’d already nailed her past. He was reading her like a book, and could be playing her, too. A cat with a little rookie mouse. Some psychopath getting off on inserting himself into the investigation. She’d read stories of killers who’d actually applied to become officers in order to get an up-close insider police view of their own crimes.

  Psychopaths are brilliant liars, Tana, charmers. Like Ted Bundy …

  She cleared her throat. “
Who is the author of this book, and what is the title?”

  “The Hunger by Drakon Sinovski. A pseudonym for a guy named Henry Spatt.”

  Her brain raced. That name. She’d heard it, just recently—the diner. The man eating with Markus Van Bleek.

  … Been coming for the last five years, and will keep doing so as long as Charlie Nakehk’o can, or will, guide us …

  “What does the ink-drawing image look like?”

  “A wendigo thing. A cannibalistic, mythical ‘soul stealer,’ part man, part wolf.” He paused. “It was depicted with bloody teeth, squatting, holding up a woman’s head by the hair, the neck a ripped and bloodied stump. The woman’s eyes had been gouged out.”

  Mistrust and fear curdled into her stomach.

  “O’Halloran,” she said quietly, firmly. “You need to get out of this room. I want you to leave this station.”

  He took a step toward her, and again Tana fought the urge to step back. His raw masculinity, his size over hers, the hot fervor in his eyes scared her. Her gaze went again to his tats. She needed to run a criminal record check—O’Halloran might not even be his real name, which is why he’d come across a cipher on her earlier, cursory Internet search.

  “When will you get the autopsy reports?” he said.

  “I’m going to tell you one more time, step out of this room.”

  “Or what? You’ll call for backup?”

  She forced herself not to glance toward the phone on the table. She was on her own. Totally on her own. Just her, and her sick dogs.

  “You’re going to need help with this, Tana.”

  “Not your help.”

  He looked at her long and hard. Inhaled, then nodded slowly. He brushed past her and reached for his jacket. He shrugged into it.

  “Be careful,” he said. And he left.

  Tana affixed her headlamp, and stepped outside with Toyon and Max on leads. It was just after 7:00 a.m. The world was a dark snow globe. She’d hardly slept since the early hours of the morning after O’Halloran had left.

  She trudged into the big, soft drifts, a silent maelstrom of snowflakes dancing around her. She let her dogs do their business before taking them back inside.

  “You’re going to be fine, boys,” she said as she unhooked and hung up their leads. “I know it—you look much better, already. And we’re not going to take eyes off you guys for one minute, me or Rosalie. You’re going to stay here, inside the detachment and only walk on leash. For your own good, okay? Until I can figure out who did this.”

  She stoked up the fire and fed Max and Toyon, then sat down to call Yellowknife. It was far too early for Keelan or Cutter to be in the office, but that’s what she was counting on. She wanted to sideline them, to reach some detective coming off night duty who could alert major crimes to the startling similarities between four apparent wolf-bear attacks over a period of four years.

  She picked up the receiver, and stilled.

  Dead silence.

  She tapped the bar on the phone. Nothing.

  Tana got up and went to the phone on Rosalie’s desk. Also dead. So was the one in the interview room.

  The satellite dish probably needed to be swept of heavy snow.

  Tana re-donned her heavy gear, and tromped outside feeling like the cop woman from that movie Fargo.

  She waded through the drifts to the RCMP garage that housed the truck, two snowmobiles, and two ATVs. In the garage she found a long-handled broom and a snow shovel. She headed for the fenced-in sat dish and telecommunications enclosure adjacent to the station. The area was lit by a tall and useless security light that cast a pale halo into the darkness and swirling snow.

  In the beam of her headlamp she noticed what looked like a soft depression in the new snow. It led to the fence. She thought of the stone that came through her window last night, the shadows she’d seen outside. She followed the depression. Her heart gave a slight kick as she saw that the track led right up to the telcom area fence. And picked up on the other side, inside the enclosure.

  She worked up a sweat, hurriedly digging snow away from the wire gate, and while she dug, it continued to come down, caking her hat, flakes melting on her lashes. She pulled open the gate, waded in through the drifts, and when she reached the satellite dish, the toe of her boot kicked something hard under the powder. She bent down and felt through the soft snow until she grasped it. Tana pulled it up out of the drift—an aggressive pair of bolt cutters. Her gaze shot to the dish, and she gaped as her flashlight beam hit on the cables. Cut. All of them. Clean through. Her gaze shot up higher. Even the cables that led up the length of their little cell tower that broadcast to their small village cellular network had been severed.

  Twin Rivers had just been cut off from the rest of the world. No satellite signals. No cellular. No Internet, nothing.

  “Constable?”

  She jumped, spun. Through the whirling white darkness came a Cyclops with his headlamp. “It’s me,” he said. “Bob Swiftriver. The maintenance guy. I sweep the dish when it snows.”

  “Bob. Yeah, hi, right. I was just going to do it myself. I needed to get a call out.”

  He neared, and she saw his familiar craggy face. He was studying the path she’d dug out with her shovel. “We have a snow blower in the garage, you know?”

  “Look—” she said, pointing the broom up at the tower cables. “Cut. All of it. The whole system is down. Internet, everything. How long will it take to get this fixed—who in town can fix it?”

  He stared, eyes going wide. Then he whistled slowly. “Holy jumping steelhead. Who would do this? Why?” he said.

  Fucking vandals, that’s who. That’s what they’d been doing last night while her dogs lay dying. Her money was on those kids—Damien and his gang. The ones she’d busted for the booze. Payback—Damien had threatened it when she’d put him into the cell for a couple of nights. Probably them who’d tried to hurt her dogs, too. A raw, red ferocity burned into her chest. She was going to find them. At first light. No fucking way was she going to let these bastards win. She’d show them who was boss.

  She also had to inform Chief Peters and the band council about this sabotage—the whole town, business, was going to suffer until they could get this fixed.

  “I’ve still got a portable sat phone,” she said, as much to herself as to Bob as she stared up at the tower. I can call NorthTel—I should be able to get a signal out as soon as this weather lifts.”

  Because right now they were socked in. Cloud cover was dense, and the snow was like wet concrete.

  “The NorthTel repair guys will have to fly in,” Bob said in his lazy singsong voice. “And bring spare parts.” He looked at the sky. “That’s not going to happen for a few weeks with this weather. Still more storms coming in. Lots of snow. More fog.”

  Tana put her head back, letting the flakes settle cold on her cheeks, her eyes. And she breathed in deep and slow through her nose.

  You can do this.

  Just keep doing your job. Finish your report, your investigation. Keep trying to contact Yellowknife.

  She would not let the Twin Peaks-Fargo weirdness of this remote, dark place get to her.

  Like it had gotten to Sergeant Elliot Novak, and Corporal Hank Skerritt, and even Corporal Barry Buccholz, it seemed.

  O’Halloran’s words circled her mind …

  You’re going to need help with this, Tana …

  Yeah. And she’d get it. On her terms. Her first order was to sort out whoever did this, and to inform the town via the chief.

  She asked Bob to clear the snow around the garage area, and she stomped up the steps to the police station, but at the entrance she froze in her tracks.

  Something had been pinned into the wooden door by a metal tool about the length of a pencil. She stepped closer with her headlamp. And her breath caught.

  Bile lurched to her throat. Her heart stuttered and then raced.

  An eyeball.

  Skewered to her door.

 
She swallowed slowly, forcing calm. It was too big for a human eye, thank God—almost an inch in diameter. More like a deer eye. Tana removed her heavy mitts, and took several close-up photos with her phone.

  She ferreted for the latex gloves she kept in her inside pocket, snapped them on. Tentatively, she touched the eye. It was frozen. It had been out here a while. And the metal tool skewering it, she did not recognize. It reminded her of something that might be found in a dentist’s office.

  She glanced over her shoulder, heart thumping. Everywhere snow shadows seemed to swirl and duck into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Who did it?” said Chief Dupp Peters.

  “Don’t know yet,” Tana said. “I was hoping you might have some idea. Do you think Damien and his crowd are capable of sabotaging town communications and poisoning my dogs like that?”

  “Damien?” said Dupp, taking a sip of his coffee. “I dunno. The kid on his own is not all bad, but that pack of guys from Wolverine Falls that he runs with? Some bad eggs in that bunch.”

  Tana was seated with the chief and his wife Alexa at a small table in their kitchen. After walking and feeding her dogs, and leaving instructions for Rosalie, Tana had stopped by the chief’s house on her way to find Damien. She was duty bound to brief him on something as serious as the satcom sabotage. She also wanted to ask his son, Caleb, about the fight with Jamie TwoDove at the Red Moose.

  Alexa was feeding their grandson Tootoo, who burbled in his high chair at her side. Tootoo’s mother had died shortly after giving birth. Cancer. And watching Tootoo playing with his cereal, Tana wondered how she was going to do it—be a single mom and a cop. She’d need a sitter. And she still hadn’t put in for maternity leave.

  “What about Jamie?” Tana said, struggling to tear her gaze away from chubby little Tootoo. “D’you think he’s capable of sabotage and poisoning?”

  “You mean as revenge, because you put him in jail?” said Alexa.

  “Maybe. And my dog did go for his leg when I arrested him.”

  “Nah, not Jamie,” Dupp said. “He’s too upset about Selena. That’s all. He’s not a bad boy. He’s a real sensitive kid, and he loves animals. It’s why he never really took to the taxidermy.”