In the Dark

by Loreth Anne White

  Tears made Ben’s black eye makeup run, streaking gray tracks through the white pancake stuff smeared over his face as he was bounced around in his seat. The black trails leaked into the bloodred lipstick he’d used to paint a ghoulish smile around his mouth. His head bobbed under a spiky, psychedelic green wig that matched the green waistcoat beneath his purple coat. Her little eight-year-old Joker. And she’d let him down. Again.

  Callie’s support system had failed her this morning. Just as she’d been ready to go out the door, Rachel—who always took care of Benjamin when Callie was on a SAR mission—had phoned to say her whole family was down with a terrible bout of flu. Callie had tried in vain to rustle up another caregiver on short notice, someone who’d be able to drive Ben to the Halloween party he’d been so excited about for weeks, but after a few calls Callie had been forced as a last resort to bundle Benjamin up into her truck along with his iPad and headphones and books. She’d had no choice but to bring him along.

  “Everyone from my class is going, except me. I’m the loser again. There won’t be another Halloween party until next year,” he wailed. “You promised!” Anger showed in his little gloved fists. Guilt punched through Callie.

  “I bet you won’t even find the plane in time! And we won’t even get to see Dad tonight. And we won’t get to see the movie. We won’t have the fried chicken or the dessert you promised. Because you don’t keep promises.”

  Callie sucked in a deep breath. She felt torn. She reminded herself to stop using phrases like I promise. “Hopefully we will find the plane before it gets dark, Ben, and we’ll still go visit Dad.”

  “Who’s on the stupid plane anyway? Why did it have to crash?”

  “A woman pilot.” She took another sharp bend along the twisting track through the forest. Her tires slipped and spun in deep mud. She felt the four-wheel drive engage. “We don’t know who she is yet, or how or why her plane went down. But we have a good idea where it might have gotten hung up downriver.”

  As the local SAR manager, Callie had officially initiated a group callout the night before, and she’d given her team of fourteen volunteers the coordinates for a rendezvous point not far from the Taheese River. It was as close as they could get with trucks. From that point the teams would need to go farther on foot, or use quads. An air search was not possible in this weather, and neither was using a drone. One of her team leaders was Oskar Johansson. She’d tasked Oskar with setting up the SAR command vehicle at the designated parking area. Callie would manage the search from the command van in concert with an RCMP member. As a group of civilian SAR volunteers, they worked under the direction of law enforcement. Always.

  Legally, only the cops could task a SAR group for an operation, and it was Callie’s job once she got that call from the police to set the ball rolling by contacting the provincial Emergency Coordination Centre to receive an operational task number. Without the number there would be no insurance coverage for the volunteers, and no workers’ compensation for injuries incurred.

  Callie had taken over the manager job from her husband, Peter. She’d agreed to do it temporarily—to keep his seat warm, so to speak. And she enjoyed it. She felt she was a good fit. She got on well with people in general, had decent leadership skills and a positive outlook, and had put in countless hours of training; plus she’d logged enough callouts to be considered a veteran of this rescue business. She’d also won the respect of her team. Yet on another level, they—including her—were all still waiting for Peter’s return to the helm. There was always this sense of a ticking clock, of time slipping away.

  She pulled into the clearing. Several vehicles were already parked under the trees, including a muddy RCMP truck with stripes down the sides and a light bar on top. Oskar had positioned the KSAR command van toward the rear of the clearing, leaving room for the others to park. An awning had been extended from the van, with a pop-up canopy erected over a table alongside it. On the table were two industrial-size urns, mugs, and donated cookies. Sergeant Mason Deniaud stood beside the table, under the canopy, talking to Oskar, who held a steaming mug in his hand. Oskar was a tall Norwegian with white-blond hair, an avid mountaineer and kayaker who’d made Canada his home for the past eight years. Oskar was the KSAR expert in swift-water rescue. Good at rope skills, too. Callie relied heavily on his talent, and on his sheer strength and stamina. His dry wit was a bonus.

  As she backed her truck in between two trees, wet branches scraping her roof, her thoughts turned to the new sergeant. If Mason Deniaud had just waited a few more minutes until she’d arrived the day before, they could have all been spared this exercise in what was turning out to be terrible weather. Benjamin might have made his Halloween party.

  Instead, she was now sending teams to search along a section of the Taheese River that was dangerous in rain, and potentially deadly if someone slipped into the frigid rapids. Her irritation mounted as she put her truck in gear, turned the engine off, and reached into the back for her SAR cap and the box of muffins she’d baked last night. Baking was Callie’s way of dealing with insomnia, which had become a discomfiting companion of late.

  “Come, Ben.” She tugged on her cap and threaded her ponytail out the back. “You can hang out inside the van. The generator will keep it warm inside, and you can play your game on your iPad, or read a book. You could even help run the search if you like.” Callie worked to keep her voice upbeat.

  Ben scowled and folded his arms tightly across his chest. He hunkered lower into the passenger seat, a bizarre and angry little creature under his clown head of acid-green hair. Disquiet threaded through Callie.

  “Benny?”

  “I want him to move back home.”

  The words punched her out of left field. Her mind reeled. She swallowed. “He . . . he will, Ben.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.” She cleared her throat. “Very soon, I hope.”

  Her son glanced up at her with his blackened eyes and smeared Joker face. “You promise?”

  Pain mushroomed in her chest at the irony in her little boy’s tone. With it came resentment. Anger. All of it boiled up inside her in a horrible, hot, toxic cocktail. How could she even begin to think of promising her son things that were not in her control? She inhaled deeply, struggling to find the calm needed to focus on this mission.

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself tonight, Ben?” she asked quietly.

  His red-lipsticked mouth dropped open and hung slack as he stared incredulously at her. “You’re stupid!” he snapped. “He won’t tell me—you know he won’t.”

  She blinked at the vitriol blazing in her son’s eyes. Gently she said, “You do need to ask him these things, Benny. We both do. I think it will be good. It could make him commit to doing it, to making it happen.”

  “You’re lying.”

  A knock sounded on her fogged-up window. It was Oskar, gesticulating and pointing toward his watch, then at the command vehicle where Mason Deniaud waited. Callie made a motion that she was coming.

  “Come on, Benny,” she said again.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Your daddy would want us to find that plane, Benjamin. Your dad would want that, okay? He’ll be so proud of you when you tell him that you helped us.”

  “I won’t be helping. I’ll be sitting in the stupid van!”

  “You are helping, Benny, by helping me. You’re helping simply by hanging out. Otherwise I would not even be able to be here.” She opened her door.

  “I’m Ben. Not Benny.” His lip quivered.

  “I’m sorry, Ben.”

  Why can’t I call my baby boy Benny any longer? He’s only eight. Can I not just put his growth on pause until Peter comes home? How can I allow Peter to miss out on all the little milestones of Benny’s life—all the days, weeks, months?

  Would it be years until Peter came through the door of their house again? How much longer until Callie might see the light and love in her husband’s eyes again, hear his laughter, feel
his touch, make love just one more time?

  Ben turned his back on her and folded his arms tighter. His shoulders began to heave. He was crying.

  “Ben?”

  “Not coming. Staying in the truck.”

  Callie took another deep breath. “Okay. But I can’t leave the engine running. When you get cold, come over to the command vehicle, all right?”

  Silence. His green head remained turned away.

  Her heart ached. She got out, shut the door, and ducked through the pelting sleet, making her way toward the awning, where Oskar waited with Mason Deniaud. In his hands Oskar held a clipboard with the KSAR incident sign-up sheet.

  “Oh, you brought muffins,” he said.

  “Morning, Sergeant Deniaud. Oskar. Sorry I’m late. Ben’s sitter bailed.” Callie set her muffin container on the table. She opened the lid. “Help yourselves. Sunflower and pumpkin seed on this end.” She pointed. “Blueberry-banana on that end. No sugar added, just Medjool dates and the bananas for sweetness.”

  “Call me Mason,” said the sergeant. “And thanks again for yesterday.”

  She glanced up and met his gaze. His eyes were gray. A very light gray. Deep creases at the corners. Something about the look in those eyes gave her pause and suddenly made her want to downplay this man’s error in judgment yesterday.

  “Well, let’s hope we find that de Havilland soon,” she said crisply as she grabbed a mug and poured herself a coffee from the urn. “Shall we get started?” As she spoke, one more vehicle trundled into the clearing, wipers smearing mud across the windscreen.

  “That’s Julia,” Oskar said. “I asked her to bring Zipper. I figured this incident would be a good first try for them as an official K9 cadaver team. I’ll go get her signature for the sign-in, and we can get rolling.”

  Callie and Mason watched Oskar run through the mud and sleet toward Julia’s vehicle. Julia exited and opened the back of her SUV to access her chocolate lab in his travel cage.

  Mason selected a muffin and bit into it. “So that’s Zipper?” he said with a nod toward the Labrador, now tugging excitedly at the end of his lead.

  “Yeah.” Callie sipped her coffee, watching as Zipper leaped about at the end of his lead. Steam rose against her face. She turned her attention to the other members, who’d already arrived and were either checking their gear, organizing their packs, or chatting in small groups beneath the cover of the trees. They knew to leave her and Oskar alone while they planned the search.

  Sleet drummed steadily down. It dripped from the bills of KSAR caps and from the heavy wet branches of the surrounding woods. It would likely turn to snow by evening. And visibility would be shit. Callie was thankful this wasn’t a live search. Victims didn’t last long in wet cold like this. Maybe a day or two. Sometimes as little as four hours, depending on the psyche of the victim. She’d become an expert in profiling the missing, predicting who would travel where, and why, and what their chances of survival would be on any given mission. She’d gotten so good she was often called out to assist other SAR groups on particularly challenging searches throughout the province.

  “Who’s Ben?” Mason asked.

  She turned to look at him. He’d stopped chewing. He held a wad of paper napkin in his hand, folded around what Callie guessed had been his bite of her muffin. She nodded toward the object in his hand. “That bad, huh?”

  He pulled a face. “Pretty terrible.”

  She snorted. “That’s what I get for trying to serve healthy stuff to cops who like doughnuts.”

  “Who said I liked doughnuts?”

  “You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

  He smiled. It put dimples into his gaunt cheeks, and it made something go quiet inside her. She shook the sensation aside, but on some deep level it had set her off-kilter.

  “Ben is my son,” she said. “He’s eight going on eighteen, and he’s pissed to be missing his Halloween party.”

  Mason’s smile faded. “Eight?”

  “Well, just. He turned eight last month.”

  Mason’s gaze ticked briefly to her ring finger, then to her truck, where the dark shape of Benny’s little wigged head could be seen as a shadow behind the foggy window.

  “It’s a good age,” he said softly, still staring at the truck. “Enjoy the moments. Don’t let them slip by.”

  She frowned. “Do you have kids?”

  “No.” The word came out sharp. His face was blank. All cop. As if armor had suddenly gone up around him. It piqued Callie’s curiosity.

  Oskar ducked back in under the awning with his sign-up sheet. “Okay, everyone is here,” he said in his deep voice and singsong Norwegian accent. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Once inside the command vehicle, Callie spread out a topographical map over the table. The curved contour lines showed challenging terrain with steep peaks and deep troughs through which the Taheese River thundered.

  Callie placed her finger on the map. “The de Havilland Beaver Mk 1 was last seen here, at the Taheese Narrows. The pilot was strapped inside, deceased, and possibly female. For this first operational period, our search objective is body and plane recovery.”

  “And we’re certain she was deceased when first seen?” Oskar asked.

  “I’m certain,” Mason said.

  Oskar rubbed his square jaw as he studied the map. “And no sign of any passengers?”

  “I didn’t see any, but my vantage point was poor,” said Mason.

  “A de Havilland Beaver Mk 1 can accommodate six to eight occupants,” said Oskar. “Depending on how it’s been configured inside. The aircraft is commonly used for glacier sightseeing around here. But so far no one has reported any planes missing, or any pilot overdue.”

  Callie said, “We’ll brief the team to keep an eye out for indications there were more occupants. The Beaver went into the rapids at the narrows here”—she moved her finger down the twisting line of the Taheese River—“and given the high water levels and power of the river right now, after the rains and warmer-than-usual temperatures at higher elevations, I believe the wreck could have washed over this first waterfall in the series of the multistep falls here, and our highest POD—maybe a sixty percent POD—is right there.” She tapped the map. “That big pool below the first waterfall.”

  “POD?” Mason said.

  Callie met his eyes. Again she felt an odd frisson. She cleared her throat. “Probability of detection. We work in probabilities, maximizing search efforts in the highest areas first. If we find nothing, we expand from there.”

  “Too windy and foggy to deploy the drone,” Oskar said, almost to himself, as he continued to pore over the map.

  “The drone’s infrared wouldn’t help with a deceased body,” Callie said.

  “Ja, but in good conditions the camera could pick out shapes deep under the water.” He pointed to the pool below the first waterfall. “We can put the K9 cadaver team in there. Julia can work Zipper along this bank. Prevailing wind is from the northwest right now, so this area will be downwind of the pool and the best location to pick up any scent coming off the water.”

  “So the dog would pick up the plane, underwater, in the river?” Mason asked.

  They both regarded the sergeant. He might have been a big-city homicide cop, but this was clearly his first SAR command as an RCMP officer. His lack of experience could prove a problem.

  “The scent from the body inside the wreck,” Callie said simply. “Julia Smith has been working over the past two years to certify Zipper for cadaver work, pestering the local dentist for pulled human teeth so she could train her dog on human scent. These dogs can work from boats, too, but the handler has to understand the movement of any scent that comes up in bubbles through the water, or in other ways, in order to interpret alerts properly.”

  “If Julie and Zipper work out, it’ll save a helluva lot of time and resources in the future,” Oskar said.

  “Okay, so we put the K9 team in at the big pool,” Callie said. “A
second team goes in via ATV farther downriver, along this old access track here.” She pointed. “We’ll deploy a third team to the top tier of the falls here, in case the wreck got hung up in the rocks and never made it over the first waterfall. We’ll take breaks in stages and redeploy or ramp up depending on what we find, but we stop before we lose light.” She looked up. “This is not rated as a time-critical mission. Survivors are unlikely, and my primary role is not to further endanger life.” She said this for Mason’s benefit.

  Mason said, “From our end, Nav Canada also has no overdue flights or missing aircraft being reported from any of its flight information centers. No emergency transponder signals have been received. And Transport Canada has zero record of any aircraft with the registration C-FABC on the Canadian Civil Aircraft Register.”

  “And you’re sure it’s the correct registration?” Oskar asked.

  “I remembered it correctly,” Mason said coolly.

  Callie and Oskar exchanged a look. Oskar crooked up an eyebrow.

  “The CAR did have a de Havilland Beaver with that mark on file,” Mason said. “But it was removed from the register ten years ago.”

  “What does that mean?” Oskar asked.

  “The CAR allows for the removal of an aircraft from the register in cases where the aircraft has been destroyed, permanently withdrawn from service, is missing and the search is terminated,” Mason said. “Or if the aircraft has been missing for sixty days or more.”

  “So this Beaver was withdrawn from service?” Callie asked. “It wasn’t actually licensed to fly?”

  “The CAR does reuse registration marks for other aircraft once a plane has been decommissioned, but there is nothing on record to indicate this has been done.”

  “Faen.” Oskar swore softly in his native tongue as he dragged his hand over his cropped hair. “So we’re looking for an illegal plane?”

  “Possible,” Mason said.