In the Dark

by Loreth Anne White

  He imagined Pilot Doe again, sitting at the de Havilland Beaver controls in these clothes. An enigmatic woman with short, bleached, silvery-white hair, wilderness flying skills. Fit, capable. He imagined the loud sound of the Beaver engine. Cell phone in her back pocket. He paused the image.

  The back pocket of fairly fitted jeans was not the most common place for a female to carry a cell phone. She’d have been sitting on it while flying. Then again, it wasn’t unusual to carry a phone there, either, especially for males. He pictured someone else on the aircraft, approaching from behind. Her assailant would have perhaps come up the aisle between the pilot and copilot seats. He imagined her turning. The shock on her face when she realized what was happening. Letting go of the controls to raise her hands in self-defense. The blade plunging in. Plane maybe going down. Pain. Deeper shock. Panic. The pilot trying to move farther back in the small cockpit space as her assailant ripped out the knife and came back in with the more forceful second strike. The killing strike.

  It was close range. Personal. Bloody. Messy. Contrary to what was depicted in novels, or on television, unless one was trained to kill, murdering a person up close like this was hard. Unnatural for most. It went against every grain in the human body. Not even cops were trained to kill. Officers were trained instead to halt imminent danger by using potentially lethal force, but they were not trained killers, not like soldiers.

  So had this attack been motivated by rage? Some hot passion that would have overridden more logical impulses? Or had the assailant been trained to kill—like an army vet or someone serving in the military? Had the assailant had an exit strategy?

  He was eager to hear what the TSB would have to say about the mechanism behind the actual downing of the plane.

  He picked up the bag containing the murder weapon. He examined the knife closely. Blunt-looking blade, apart from the tip. Nick marks along the edges. And there was the oxidation. This knife had been well used for a variety of tasks over time, but not recently, given the deep patina on the carbon steel blade.

  It looked aggressive. Leather washers that had been shrunk and packed close formed a cover around the handle, which ranged in tone from rust brown to almost black. The washers were coming loose. Good place to trap DNA, he thought.

  He’d learned more about these Schrade knives since he’d last seen Callie. These Sharpfingers had been manufactured in the United States for a period of fifty years. There were literally millions out there. They held little value for collectors because there were so many. A buyer could snap one up for anything from between five and twenty bucks. The older knives had a tang stamp—a mark on the back portion of the blade. The fact the assailant had left this knife—the murder weapon—in the decedent’s neck suggested the attacker had departed in a hurry. And the murder had not been done with much forethought regarding escape. Which steered him back to a killing of passion—rage or fear. Acted out in the heat of the moment.

  “Is there any way you might be able to tell from her body whether she’d been flying, and up in the air, when she was stabbed?”

  “Negative,” said Skinner. “Apart from the fact that I’m not seeing the kind of injuries I’d expect from a plane crash. Then again, I’ve learned to expect the unexpected in this line of work.” The pathologist reached for the sheet. “You done?”

  Mason nodded.

  Skinner drew the sheet up over Pilot Doe’s face. “I’ve seen people walk away from a serious floatplane crash that by all rights should have killed everyone on board. I’ve heard several freaky survival stories. Like that one about the female teenager flying in a commercial aircraft over the Amazon jungle when it exploded. Everyone died, but her seat was blown free, and she whirled down, strapped into that seat, from tens of thousands of feet like one of those whirling seedpods. The spinning and the shape of her seat slowing the speed of her plunge. Then she hit massive jungle trees and came down through the canopy with branches breaking her fall before she hit the ground. Seat helped protect her. She lived for weeks on her own before a tribe found her, before she eventually walked out. Depends on the mechanics of a crash.” The pathologist handed Mason a clipboard with a sheet of paper to sign. “The TSB investigators should help with that.”

  Mason signed the page. “Yeah. I’m eager to hear their preliminary thoughts because it’s going to take some time before those guys wrap up anything and issue a final report.” He handed the clipboard back to Skinner. “You’ll be sending the autopsy report direct to Fielding?”

  Skinner nodded.

  THE LODGE PARTY

  BART

  Sunday, October 25.

  “Karma,” Bart said loudly as it struck him. “It’s fucking karma!”

  Steven halted on the stairs. He turned slowly to stare.

  Electricity crackled through Bart’s blood. “Don’t you see?”

  “See what?” asked Steven, rejoining the circle gathered in front of the hearth.

  “The RAKAM Group—RAKAM is an anagram of KARMA.” Bart’s heart beat slow and steady against his ribs in time with the tock, tock, tock of the old grandfather clock. His gaze shot to the shelves of dank and moldering books. Then back to the cedar carvings on the table, the burnished wood of the figurines gleaming in the firelight. Then to the piece of paper with the rhyme lying on the table next to the checkerboard.

  He’d thought this was all kind of fun, a wild adventure, when they’d first landed. But now . . .

  He took two strides forward and snatched up the headless carving that Jackie had set back on the table. He examined the decapitated wooden torso carefully. “It’s been chopped off, and recently,” he said. “See these marks here? See how the wood is lighter, no aging, rough ridges.” He held it out for all of them to see.

  “If this carving does represent Dan Whitlock,” he said, “someone knew one of us wasn’t going to make it onto that plane, and they had this waiting here for the rest of us to find.”

  “Doesn’t mean Dan Whitlock is dead,” Monica said. “It could just be implied, to make us scared.”

  “Well, we certainly have no way of knowing whether he is dead or not, now do we?” Steven said.

  “Thing is”—Stella sat forward—“Dan Whitlock was on my passenger manifest. There’s only room for eight on my plane. If Dan hadn’t bailed, there’d have been no room for Steven. Bart’s right. Someone was meant to miss the flight. But like Monica, I . . . I just can’t imagine he’s dead.”

  “Maybe he’s the sick psychopath who’s behind all of this,” Bart said. “Maybe Dan Whitlock feigned being falling-down drunk so we’d believe he was incapable of doing anything other than going upstairs to his room to sleep it off. Meanwhile, maybe he snuck out and sabotaged the plane’s radio during the night, then in the morning he called Amanda to say he was too hungover to travel.”

  Silence fell over the group as they processed this idea.

  “Stella,” Deborah said, her voice soft, “how come you didn’t notice there were too many passengers on your manifest when you initially received the list?”

  “Because Steven wasn’t on it. I only had seven people listed, plus myself.”

  “What about Amanda? Did she have both Dan Whitlock and Steven on her list?” asked Deborah.

  “Yes,” said Stella, “but she claimed to not know that I could only accommodate a total of eight on my aircraft.”

  “So you were set up,” Bart said. “We all were.”

  “In Agatha Christie’s story,” Jackie said, very quietly, “the murderer was one among the group of people on the island. It was one of them who was doing the killing.”

  “So now you’re saying it’s one of us?” demanded Steven, his voice booming up to the vaulted ceiling. Fine bits of dust and debris suddenly rained down from the chandelier up high. Nathan scowled at him. Monica reached for her husband’s hand and seemed to squeeze a silent caution. Bart watched them.

  He didn’t trust Nathan.

  Especially not now, in the face of this grim ga
me. Nathan stared at him funny when he thought Bart wasn’t looking—Nathan, who’d asked Bart if they’d met before.

  The tension thickened.

  “So it was the character of the judge in the story who was the murderer?” asked Katie.

  “Yeah,” Jackie said. “The judge knew everyone in the group had gotten away with murder, and he staged the whole thing. When the group arrived on the isolated island, they gathered for a dinner party, expecting their hosts would show up. Instead, a recording was played which accused each one of a murder for which they had not been punished.” She paused. Yellow light played over the planes of one side of her face, casting the other half in shadow. Her eyes glinted like pieces of black coal. “It was a reckoning,” she said.

  “Are you implying each of us has killed someone?” Stella asked, her voice going high and a strange look that Bart couldn’t quite read taking over her features.

  Tock, tock, tock, went the clock. A shutter banged again in the wind. They all jumped. Eyes were wide and faces white. Everyone was jittery.

  “No, that’s absurd,” said Bart. “Because I know I have never killed anyone. It’s . . . That idea is just nuts.”

  “If there is any logic to this,” Jackie countered, “at the worst this rhyme is accusing all of us of being liars. Nine Little Liars. Invited to this lodge.”

  “Liars and sinners,” whispered Monica. “If that cross-stitched verse in the downstairs bathroom means anything.”

  “And our mysterious KARMA-RAKAM host appears to want justice,” added Nathan, “if that painting in Katie’s room with the scales of justice symbolizes anything.”

  “What have we all done, then?” Jackie surveyed the group. “What have we all lied about? Which person out there in the world could think each of us has committed a sin? How are we eight in this room connected to this mastermind psycho? What person do we all know in common?”

  “I don’t see any point in asking this shit,” Deborah snapped. Her crisp shift in tone startled Bart. The woman’s eyes looked hot, and her skin was flushed. “You’re all just accepting this as fact.” She waved her hand at the checkerboard and figurines. “Maybe it’s nothing like this at all! Maybe you all just have some guilt that is driving you to think you’re being punished for your sins.”

  “The Monster rises within,” murmured Monica.

  “What?” said Jackie.

  “It’s nothing,” Monica said.

  Steven reseated himself slowly beside Deborah. The surgeon’s whole body was wire-tight. Bart figured the doc was a hair away from snapping. He wouldn’t risk going under that guy’s knife.

  “Look,” Stella said, “answering those questions might help us get out of this. We need to know what we’re up against.”

  Bart glanced up at the ceiling, then scanned the paneled walls with their freakish masks and paintings, wondering for a bizarre moment if there might be cameras hidden somewhere, if this might indeed be some weird-ass reality television show into which they’d been lured. Maybe someone would pop out in a few days along with a bunch of camera people and offer them a bunch of money if they agreed to allow this footage to air for a show.

  Or was his brain just scrambling for a way out of this, for a way to see this as something other than a sick mastermind’s plot to pick them off one by one? He cast his mind back, trying to recall anything he might have done that would induce someone to lure him here for this sick game. What had he lied about?

  There was a time—well over a decade ago—when Bart had done jobs for shady people. His brother’s people—mostly motorcycle-gang affiliates.

  Bart had worked as a mechanic, and he’d accepted payment in cash under the table. And he never asked questions, no matter who brought him the job. Sometimes the vehicles were hot. Sometimes he did rush paint jobs. Or handled chop shop stuff. Sometimes the work came in bulk. Sometimes piecemeal. But he’d been able to demand a high price in return for secrecy, so it had paid incredibly well. The money had been tax-free and welcome. He and his older brother had lost their parents young, and they’d been poor kids who’d had to fight to find ways to survive. That’s what the under-the-table work had been to Bart. Survival. And when he’d squirreled away enough tax-free income, he’d bought his first two shuttle buses. Then a third, followed by a town car. And he’d hired drivers. It had been the start of Executive Transit. He’d made good. And he’d put his questionable past behind him. Was that what this was? Had karma somehow caught up with him?

  Bart’s gaze shifted to Nathan again. The man’s words over dinner curled through his mind.

  Do I know you? Have we met before?

  Bart had said no, he didn’t think so.

  But in this new context, he began to dig deeper toward that little niggle that Nathan’s question had planted deep inside his brain. Could Nathan McNeill have been associated with his brother’s people? Bart couldn’t see it—not a nerdy professor of mycology.

  Could I have done mechanical work for Nathan in some other capacity?

  Something began to nudge at the faded edges of Bart’s memory, growing louder.

  “Jackie’s right,” Bart said quietly. “We need to figure out how we might have crossed paths in the past. We need to say what we think we lied about, then see how it could all be connected.”

  “I’m not a liar,” said Katie, blowing her nose.

  “Everyone’s a liar,” Deborah said. “And if you claim you are not, you’re lying right there.”

  Steven’s shoulders snapped back. “How dare—”

  “This isn’t going to help, Steven,” Monica warned.

  “Okay,” Bart said. “I’ll start. Nathan, you felt you might know me, and the more I consider it, the more I feel you’re correct, that we might have met. But I can’t recall where.” He hesitated, afraid of allowing these people in on his murky past. “I used to work as a mechanic in Burnaby before I started Executive Transit. I’m not proud to say I did jobs off the books, and accepted cash under the table to fix hot vehicles.” He looked Nathan dead in the eyes. “Is there a chance I might have done some work for you?”

  The blood drained from Nathan’s head.

  Monica reached for her husband’s hand again, held tight. Steven went eerily still.

  Bart was not the only one who noticed this ripple reaction. He could see that Deborah was watching the trio, and he saw Stella and Jackie exchange a glance.

  “I never had any mechanical work done out Burnaby way,” Nathan said.

  “You and Monica used to live in Kitsilano, right?” Katie addressed Nathan. “I know this because while I was with CRTV, Monica was always in the news doing social events for the children’s foundation charity. And so was Steven. You were on the board of that charity, weren’t you, Steven?”

  The surgeon cleared his throat. “It was good promo for the private surgery clinic.”

  Katie wiped her nose with her crumpled tissue. “Nathan, where did you teach before you guys moved out to Toronto?”

  Nathan wavered, then said quietly, “Simon Fraser University.”

  “That’s in Burnaby,” Bart offered. “I worked in Burnaby.”

  “So do half the people in the Lower Mainland,” Steven said curtly. “I don’t see how this proves anything.”

  “Give it a chance,” Stella said. “We might unearth some connections this way. What else are we going to do?”

  “So, Monica and Nathan, you know Steven from before, right?” Bart said.

  “Sure they know each other,” Jackie said. “I heard them talking before boarding the plane. Nathan reminded Steven that they’d met at a charity function.”

  Steven cleared his throat again. “That’s right. Like Katie said, the childcare foundation. I went to nearly all the events for a period of time. That’s how I met Monica. And then Nathan the one time.”

  Color flushed Monica’s face.

  Bart perched himself on the armrest of the sofa occupied by Monica and Nathan. “Who else knew each other from before the pla
ne trip?”

  “I’ve seen Deborah before,” Jackie offered. “I know that tattoo on her wrist. A swallow. I’ve seen that ink. And I’ve spoken to her. I know her voice.”

  They all turned to look at Deborah.

  She sat still as stone, her gaze locked on Jackie.

  “Deborah?” Stella prompted. “Where do you know Jackie from?”

  “I don’t.” Her voice came out firm. But her hands trembled, and she was pressing down hard on her knees to hide it.

  Jackie countered. “I have a memory for these things.”

  “Well, then, tell me where you met me,” Deborah said in a challenge. “Because I believe you’re mistaken.”

  Jackie eyed Deborah, and tension seemed to crackle between the two. Bart got an uneasy sense that those two did know each other from the past, and neither was prepared to say how. A secret shared, he thought. Probably a dark one. And possibly a reason they’re both here.

  “What about you, Stella?” Bart asked. “Do you recognize any of us?”

  “Well, I recognize Katie. From TV.”

  They all murmured and agreed. They’d seen her face on television.

  Stella turned to Jackie. “So you also recognize Katie from television?”

  “Yeah.”

  “CRTV is a BC news channel,” Stella said. “It’s not aired in Ontario, so if you’re from Ontario, how do you know Katie’s face from TV?”

  Jackie regarded Stella in silence. Slowly, quietly, she said, “I used to work in West Vancouver. Law enforcement.”

  “You were a cop?” Stella asked.

  “So was Dan Whitlock,” Jackie said. “He’s an ex-cop.”

  “How do you know?” Bart asked.

  “Takes one to know one. It was written all over him. And I asked him after the buffet last night. He’s ex-VPD turned private investigator.”

  “Vancouver PD?” Monica said. She looked rattled by this. She glanced at Katie. “Did you know Dan Whitlock when he was a cop, Katie? Did you ever interview him in connection with any crime incident?”