In the Dark

by Loreth Anne White

  She watched Peter’s face carefully for reactions as their son chattered on about school, about his missed Halloween party, the funny new puppy his friend had adopted. She knew in her heart Peter was listening, knew it with every fiber of her being. Peter responded well when the musical therapist sang softly to him—she saw it in his eyes. He enjoyed the kiddie movies with action and adventures, too.

  Which was why she’d kept paying for the television in his room.

  She leaned forward and took her husband’s hand. His skin was cool. His nails had been trimmed. Her heart squished in a vise of emotion. This hand had helped her climb so many mountains. It had been so calloused, so strong. With her thumb she gently stroked the back of his hand as she spoke. “Don’t worry, Pete, Ben didn’t actually see the deceased pilot.” She glanced at her son. “Mostly Benny—Ben—helped manage things from the command base.” She smiled at Ben. “And when Oskar called in the find, we drove out with the quad. We left Oskar to take over while they waited for the forensic ident team and the coroner to come in, before even considering an extrication. But Benny and me didn’t want to miss our visit with you, so Oskar said to go.” She paused. “He says hi. They all do. They’re waiting for you to come back.”

  She froze. Had he squeezed her hand? Her gaze shot to Peter’s eyes, her pulse quickening.

  “There’s a new policeman, Dad.” Ben pushed his pizza box aside and reached for his juice box. “He came with us on the quads. He’s bigger than Officer Ted was. And his hair’s black, not yellow like Officer Ted’s was.”

  Callie felt an odd clutch in her chest. She hadn’t come right out and told Peter about the new sergeant who’d sent the wreck into the Taheese rapids. Hadn’t told him how she found it amusing that the cop was an experienced veteran of major crimes, yet green in the wilderness and afraid of heights. Before Peter’s accident they would have opened a bottle of wine on a night like this, after a find, after Benny had gone to bed. And they’d have sat by the fire and laughed and joked about the lighter parts of searches, not being very PC about it all. Being avid climbers who lived for the thrill of heights, they would’ve laughed smugly about the frightened new cop. And about how out of his depth he appeared. Like policing, SAR had its share of gallows humor and lewd jokes. It had its hierarchal struggles.

  And then they would have snuggled. Maybe made love after.

  But something had stopped her from mentioning Mason Deniaud.

  “It’s a homicide investigation now,” she explained to Peter. A wisp of worry suddenly curled through her. Did he look even paler than usual? Was that sunken quality to his cheeks more marked tonight?

  It’s the light. I’m letting my mind run away with me again. I need to stay upbeat. For both Peter and Ben. They both need to believe we’re going to be a family again, soon.

  “Yeah.” Benny nodded his green head eagerly—he’d replaced his wig, but most of his face paint had long been wiped off. It gave his complexion an odd cast. “A bad guy did it and the police will get him!” He clapped his hands. “Wham. Like that. And I helped.”

  Callie felt a rush of love at the pride in Benny’s face, as if he really did have something to do with this. She made a note to herself to concentrate on giving him a sense of greater responsibility in her work. Making Ben feel that he and his mom were more of a team.

  “Hopefully the coroner will be able to make an ID soon,” she said, taking another bite of pizza and chewing half-heartedly. “Or the ident guys will find something.”

  Someone entered the room behind her—she saw the reflection on the window.

  “Mrs. Sutton?”

  Callie glanced around.

  “Dr. Stewart?” She came rapidly to her feet and set down her slice of pizza. “I . . . didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

  He smiled, but her stomach tightened as she read something in the doc’s face. “What is it?”

  “Can we have a word?” He glanced at Ben. “Down the hall. I’ll get one of the nurses to keep an eye on Benjamin.”

  “I . . . uh, sure. Ben, I’ll be right back, okay?” She hesitated. “Don’t start on the cheesecake without me, you hear?” She made a mock stern face.

  “Sure, Mom.” He swung his feet back and forth under his chair, his attention shifting to the movie.

  Callie followed the doc to a family waiting room.

  “Peter’s taken a turn, Callie. I just got results back from his recent blood work, and there are signs the bacterial infection in his blood is not responding to treatment. We’re getting him onto some stronger IV antibiotics, but if things look to be worsening during the night, we might move him into ICU, where we can keep a closer handle on things.”

  She felt her skin going hot.

  Not again.

  They’d been down this road twice already. Infections. Being bedridden and in a vegetative state for more than a year came with all manner of risks. Each time Peter had pulled back.

  “He’s strong,” she said.

  “He is.”

  “Will you, or the staff, call if anything changes? I . . . I’ve booked a motel room in town, because of the weather, so we’ll be close by.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Callie thanked the doc. He left the room. She stared after him, then went slowly up to the long window that looked out over the hospital parking lot. In the halos of the lights outside, soft flakes danced. The snow was settling over the cars, and along the road. Soft and beautiful. A peaceful snow globe, but also treacherous. She thought of the challenging hour-long drive over the mountain pass from Kluhane Bay to this town, where there was a large-enough hospital and a special facility to care for someone with Peter’s condition. She rubbed her face hard.

  It had been fourteen months since Peter’s accident on the job. She hadn’t known if he’d make it through the coma during those first days. He’d hung in for two weeks. Then he’d come out of the coma, and her excitement and hope had soared to dizzying heights. Then she’d learned that while Peter could open his eyes, and possibly had some level of awareness of things around him, he remained essentially unresponsive, and severely brain damaged. The doctors explained he was in a vegetative state. And she’d crashed back to earth, landed hard. And now . . . this could go on for years. She’d read about a cop on Vancouver Island who’d lasted more than thirty years in a similar state after a fellow officer’s car T-boned his during a high-speed response. Maybe she and Ben should move out to Silvercreek to be closer permanently. It would mean Ben leaving his school and his friends, them abandoning their close-knit community, Callie’s SAR group. Which was her other family. Her most fervent wish was that Peter would get better and just come home. It was possible—she believed it, wanted to believe it. It could happen any day, out of the blue. He could wake up properly one morning and see them all again. Speak to them. What was the point of permanently relocating if Peter suddenly got well? Maybe she could rent out here for a while to see how Ben coped.

  Callie composed herself and returned to the ward.

  “How’s the movie?” she asked Benny.

  “Good. Can we have cheesecake now?”

  “Sure.” She put a hand on Peter’s brow. At least they’d be nearby in the motel tonight. And tomorrow was a Sunday. So Benny would not be missing out on school. If need be, they could stay the week, and Ben would just have to catch up.

  “If we’re gonna be in town, Mom,” Benny said, opening the Styrofoam clamshell containing their cheesecake slices, “can we go bowling between visits to Dad?”

  “Sure.” She tried to smile, but mostly she wanted to cry. She felt beat.

  Ben looked at his father. “I want Dad to come, too.”

  She nodded. “I know, kiddo. Me too.”

  After Ben had taken a bath and was tucked up asleep in his motel room bed, Callie sat thinking in semidarkness on the other bed.

  She felt so alone. Which was nuts, because she had Ben. She had so many good people in her life. Friends. Colleagues. They all took turn
s visiting Peter. So did the guys from his work. There wasn’t a day that went by that Peter didn’t have somebody at his side. And that was what mattered.

  Her mind strayed to the dead pilot, and how she’d looked with the knife in her neck. Who was she?

  How had she gotten there?

  Did she also have someone who was waiting for her to come home?

  Callie swung her feet off the bed and checked on Ben. He was sound asleep. She pulled his covers up higher around his chin and tiptoed out of the room. She went down the passage to where there was an alcove with a window near the stairwell. There was cell service in Silvercreek, so she used her mobile to call Oskar’s home landline. Her call was picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  Callie’s heart sank a little. It was his girlfriend, Melinda.

  “Hey, Mel, it’s Callie. Is Oskar back from the callout? I was really hoping to hear if the guys had learned anything more about that pilot.”

  “Not yet. But I ran into Hubb at the diner about an hour ago, and she said Oskar and the techs had been guiding the ident guys and the coroner out to the site at the river. They all wanted to get in tonight so they could set up tents and things before it snowed too much and they lost more evidence. Hubb said she figured the Transportation Safety Board investigators would be flying in by tomorrow morning.”

  “So no clue yet who the pilot is?”

  “Not yet, not to my knowledge.”

  “Thanks, Mel. I’ll call Oskar tomorrow.”

  “Are you and Benny overnighting in Silvercreek?”

  “Yeah. Might be here a day or two.”

  “Is Peter okay, or is it road closures?”

  “He’s got another infection. And, yeah, I just got a road alert text that the highway has shut down due to an accident.”

  “I’m sorry, Callie.”

  Her words cracked something in Callie. She drew in a shaky breath and pushed a fall of hair off her face, unable to speak for a moment, at least without giving herself away.

  “You okay, Cal?”

  No. Not really. I haven’t been okay for a long time, and I don’t think I realized the extent of the toll this is taking on me.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she said, trying to sound upbeat. “Just wondering how things went with the incident after I left.”

  She killed the call. It was a police matter anyway now.

  Callie returned to her motel room. Ben was still sleeping quietly. She studied his profile in silence and thought, not for the first time, that he was looking more and more like Peter these days. Tears burned into her eyes. She kissed her son lightly on the cheek and felt guilty for wondering what Mason was doing.

  THE SEARCH

  MASON

  Monday, November 2.

  Mason watched as pathologist Dr. Caleb Skinner moved the sheet back.

  On the steel table lay the body of the decedent. Pilot Doe. A woman of average height, probably in her late forties or maybe early fifties. Well muscled. Fit. Skinner had performed the autopsy this morning. The sutured Y incision was a stark mark against the pale, dead skin.

  Mason had come to the morgue—which was in the basement of the Silvercreek Hospital—to hear Skinner’s preliminary findings, and to sign into evidence the murder weapon, the pilot’s clothes, and anything else found on the body of the decedent. The RCMP North District’s serious crime unit had assumed the lead on the case. The investigation was being run out of the North District headquarters in Prince George by a detective named Gord Fielding, with cooperation from Mason and the Kluhane Bay police, plus the RCMP’s specialist forensic teams. The Transportation Safety Board was also investigating—customary for aircraft accidents. As more information came in, it was possible that help would be drawn from police in other regions.

  There’d been no ID found on the decedent, no wallet. Only a water-damaged cell phone in the back pocket of her jeans. The phone was already in the hands of forensic specialists, who were attempting to recover its data. No registration or other papers, or cargo, had so far been found in the aircraft wreck. No sign of other passengers, either. It was possible things might have been washed out of the body of the aircraft in a crash, or by the wreck’s tumbling downriver. SAR techs in conjunction with the police and a K9 team continued to search the riverbanks.

  Mason leaned forward to better see what Dr. Skinner was pointing at.

  “Two entry wounds in the neck,” said the morgue doc. “The first incision here is consistent with the size and shape of the blade that was found inside the other neck wound here.”

  “So the first wound is shallower?” said Mason.

  The pathologist nodded. “Still a downward trajectory, but from a slightly different angle.” Skinner raised his arm high above his head, fisted his hand around an imaginary knife handle, and brought down his imaginary blade in a swift stabbing motion.

  Mason crooked up a brow at the doc’s enthusiastic role play.

  “The first strike came in from an angle like that. Downward. But less forceful than the second, which came in harder, and maybe from higher, at an angle like this—” Again Skinner demonstrated with zeal, plunging his imaginary blade in harder.

  “So her assailant was likely in a position above her,” Mason said, studying the wound. “And either she moved, or the assailant did, before the second strike.” He ran his gaze slowly down the rest of her body. His attention settled on her left arm.

  “Looks like a possible defense wound here?” He pointed to a slash on the outside of the decedent’s left arm.

  “It was incurred antemortem, so yes, it’s consistent with a defense wound. Incision is also consistent with the hooked tip of the Schrade blade.”

  Mason’s attention went to the woman’s hands. Her nails were cut very short, clean. No polish. The only jewelry had been her earrings—tiny silver hoops, one in each ear. And she’d worn a watch, a Garmin. Her silvery blonde hair was cut in one of those trendy super-short styles. The kind Mason for some reason associated with designers, architects.

  He lifted her right hand, turned it over. It was cold. No injuries. He moved to her left hand. There was a slice across her palm.

  “Another possible defense wound?” he said.

  “Again, yes, consistent with the sharp tip of the Schrade.”

  Callie’s words came to mind.

  People call it “the Sharpfinger” because of the aggressive, hooked tip on the blade . . .

  Mason tried to picture a scenario—the pilot in her seat, becoming aware she was about to be stabbed. Her arms going up, her left hand to protect her face and her right arm to block the attacker. He looked at her face again. The gash across her cheek gaped open. Bloodless.

  “That one was incurred postmortem,” Skinner said.

  Mason nodded, feeling guilt. His gaze shifted back to her hair. “Is that a natural blonde, or gray?” he asked.

  “Not a chance. Pilot Doe was a dark brunette. You can see from the roots.” He pointed. “But she has some natural silver gray, so she might have colored it to hide that.”

  Mason chewed the inside of his cheek, considering Pilot Doe’s nod to vanity. That and the small earrings. Everything else about this decedent seemed to scream efficiency, functionality. From the trimmed nails to the no-fuss haircut and lack of other jewelry.

  “Any other injuries?” he asked.

  “Postmortem blunt force trauma, and a fractured right tibia and fibula. Also incurred postmortem.”

  “So the postmortem injuries are all consistent with a dead body going over a waterfall in a floatplane wreck?”

  Skinner nodded.

  Mason winced internally.

  “So the actual cause of her death was—”

  “Exsanguination,” Skinner said. “The first wound would not have been immediately fatal, but the second severed the carotid. She bled out. It would have been fast.”

  Mason looked into Dr. Skinner’s eyes. Dark and hooded. The man had a thin face. Thick, black hai
r. Olive-toned skin. He was about six two, the same height as Mason. Skinner, he thought, was an unfortunate name for a morgue doc.

  He turned his attention back to the decedent on the slab and walked slowly around the table, churning things over in his mind.

  Who are you?

  Were you up in the air, flying the floatplane when you were attacked by a knife-wielding assailant? Was your assailant a passenger? Why an unregistered aircraft? Where does it come from? Where were you flying—en route to pick up cargo? Or had you recently delivered cargo? Perhaps it’s lost in the river.

  Mason felt in his zone. On familiar ground. He was almost thankful to this Pilot Doe lying on this morgue slab for having rescued him from seeming ineptitude, for giving him the energy to get out of bed this morning. For handing him something to obsess over so he didn’t have to think about himself, or his loss. Or too much about the ghosts that had followed him out here.

  He went to the bagged evidence on the counter—the Schrade knife, her earrings, watch, clothes.

  If the pilot had activated the GPS tracking function on her watch, techs might be able to glean information about where she’d been going.

  The brands of clothing she’d been wearing were common outdoor wear brands, and new-looking. They showed no overt clues as to where she might have bought them. A Simms shirt, buttons down the front. A North Face jacket, waterproof. A down fleece by Patagonia. Eddie Bauer jeans. Jockey underwear. Socks by Icebreaker. With a gloved hand, Mason picked up one of her hiking boots. He turned it over. It looked brand new by the minimal wear on the sole. A women’s size nine. Made by Merrell. She’d been kitted out in classic wilderness gear. These clothes, to him, felt like they might have all been acquired recently, as if for a special trip. It was a feeling and not a fact, but he’d come to trust his gut reactions. They presented possible investigative avenues, questions that should be asked.