In the Dark

by Loreth Anne White

  Everything about her was capable. Efficient. Focused. She radiated an energy Mason found contagious. Callie Sutton was the kind of person you wanted on a team, because she would bring out the best in the rest of a crew. She came across as upbeat yet professional. She appeared to enjoy the very real challenges of what was a volunteer job. Mason’s mind strayed back to their conversation at the hospital in Silvercreek—the long drive to visit her husband three times a week. Struggling to cope as a single mother, yet not actually being a single mother. Fourteen months was a long, long time to wait for a spouse to come home. Despite Callie’s belief that Peter would return, Mason guessed the odds were stacked high against this little family. And even if Peter Sutton did emerge from his vegetative state, life for Callie, Peter, and their son would remain a series of monumental challenges.

  As they gained elevation, snow appeared on the branches of the evergreens. Callie engaged the four-wheel drive as her tires struggled for traction and the mountain fell away sharply on one side. Mason knew his urban environment. The dark city streets. The gangs, organized crime, nightclubs, and other haunts. He knew the prosecutors, the workings of the courts, the snitches.

  But this wildness was Callie’s domain. He had to cede her that authority. He had to use her expertise and work with these rugged Kluhane volunteers on this different kind of policing during his tenure up here. He looked through the foggy windows at the shrouded trees. The rain was starting to spit again.

  “It’ll be getting dark by the time we reach the north end of Taheese Lake,” she said with a quick glance at him. “Depending on what we find, we’re geared to camp out. We could be out there a few days.”

  “Who’s looking after Ben?” he asked.

  Callie shot him a look, clearly surprised by his question.

  “I . . . usually I have things well oiled,” she said, negotiating another steep bend in the track. “He’s with Rachel. My friend. Rachel and her husband, Ricardo, have a son, Ty, same age as Benny. They’ve been Peter’s and my support team for our SAR work pretty much since Benny was born. Every team member needs a backup system in place,” Callie said. “So they can engage at short notice, whether it’s a supportive boss at work who’ll allow for emergency callouts that could take days, or backup school and day care plans. No sense in saving lives while messing up your own families and jobs. It’s one thing I drive home when training new recruits.”

  Mason sensed a defensiveness bristling in Callie, a twinge of motherly guilt. He was familiar with this kind of reaction. Jenny had been the same when asked about balancing her legal work and being a mom. So while Mason himself had never been confronted with questions about how he managed to be both Luke’s father and a homicide detective, he understood. Well, he understood as best he could—Jenny had always driven home this gender disparity to him.

  “What did your wife do?” Callie asked. “Did she work?”

  A little quiver went through his chest as she turned the tables on him, and he suddenly felt uncertain about sharing more about his life with her. But he’d asked for it.

  “Jenny was a lawyer. Family law.”

  She moistened her lips. Nodded. Eyes directly ahead. Her hands firming a little on the wheel.

  “There was guilt,” he offered. “As a working mom, Jenny had guilt, too. So do I.” Mason’s words surprised even himself. He cleared his throat. “In retrospect I wish I’d had more time with Luke. I wish we’d both given each other more time, and put more effort into being a family—just . . . enjoying the simple little things.”

  She threw him a hard glance. He read something in her eyes. Mason was a skilled interrogator, and in Callie’s eyes he saw conflict.

  “And if you did have a chance to do it over,” she said, “would you dial back on work and spend more time at home? Would you change jobs?”

  Mason snorted softly and stared out through the rain-spotted windshield. “Like they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty, right? I was passionate about work in major crimes. A big homicide can be all-consuming. Addictive. Jenny’s work, too. When she was tied up with a major divorce case, or a major prenup, it could be emotionally draining. Dividing families like that, looking at the hard, technical legalities of fighting over assets in the face of raw emotions like love, or hate, or loss, or betrayal.” He was quiet for a moment. “In the end, it’s the children who suffer. Always the children.”

  She bit her lower lip. But said nothing. They drove in silence a few minutes longer.

  Suddenly Mason said, “Jen was stressed.”

  Callie glanced at him. He felt hot. He didn’t want to talk about Jenny and Luke, but he also really, suddenly, needed to. It felt safe talking to Callie. She was taken. So there were no subterranean pressures there. She also suffered, so she understood. She wouldn’t judge him. He wondered if it was the same for her. If that’s why she’d told him some of the things she had at the hospital. Or if she was just open with people.

  He cleared his throat. “Jen was constantly in a rush, trying to do everything at once. And Luke was always going on about being hungry, tired, wanting to visit places, get treats, do more fun stuff, see friends, go to the beach.” He paused. Then, quietly, he said, “Sometimes I wonder, if I had picked up on those early warning signs, if I could’ve stopped it all from happening. Maybe Jenny wouldn’t have been on the road at that precise time, or maybe if she hadn’t been in such a hurry to get Luke to karate between appointments, she’d have passed that spot on the highway earlier, or been more relaxed, more vigilant, driving more defensively. Maybe she would have spotted the erratic driver and—”

  “Stop,” she said firmly. “You can’t think like that, Mason.”

  Startled by her sharp tone, Mason fell silent and regarded her intently.

  “I’ve been through those kinds of questions a million times over in my mind about Peter. What if he hadn’t been so tired, working so hard—” Emotion caught her voice. She took a breath. “What if we hadn’t had that argument before he left for work, would he have been more focused that day . . . You want someone or something, anything, to blame, to rail at, and then when you can’t find it, you try blaming yourself. You can’t go down that road, Mason. You can’t.”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly.

  They traveled in silence for a while, listening to the ticking of insistent rain on the roof of the cab, the tires squelching and crunching. Wipers slapping. Occasional gusts of wind whistled through the roof racks. It grew darker as they climbed into heavier, wetter clouds that pressed against the truck and sealed behind them as they pushed through. They lost sight of the lead rig.

  “It’s about another klick up this incline,” she said after a few minutes of driving.

  He checked his watch. “You mentioned that the owner of the lodge property, this Franz guy, was connected with Hollywood—do you know anything more than that?”

  “All I know is from village scuttlebutt. The word is that Franz was possibly retired from the film and television industry. He used to be based in California. I had a sense he might’ve been the brains behind a couple of the really popular reality television shows shortly after Survivor first aired. But I’ve never thought to dwell on it, or question the information. Like I said, I figured maybe he’s passed away, and maybe there was no family to inherit the old lodge property, because I haven’t heard of anyone being seen out there. It’s far. Isolated. Just . . . way at the end of nowhere. No one goes out there.”

  “Apart from climbers on Mount Warden.”

  “Rarely.”

  “So no campers, kids, no people heading across the lake for a bit of a joyride, bush parties?”

  “Not from what I hear. People seem to purposefully stay away, to tell you the truth. Kind of a spooky place. And the lake is long, as is the road to access the boat put-in. So unless you have a plane, it’s a challenge. Once you’re out there, you’re up against this granite rock of Mount Warden and pretty much hemmed in. And it’s an area that catches a lot of precipitation.
I have no idea why anyone would’ve wanted to build in that location to begin with—it’s not like there’s a shortage of places out here for people to lose themselves.” She shot him a look. “Sometimes for good. Like those two women who went into the mountains last year and never came out. They still haven’t been found. And the woman from the year before, who went up to her cabin alone and was never seen again.”

  He’d read some of those reports. It was not unusual for hikers to go missing in the BC wilderness and for the remains not to be found for years, sometimes decades, if ever.

  “Do you recall what kind of aircraft this Franz guy had?”

  “Also a de Havilland Beaver. Different colors—blue and white. But just about everyone who flies backcountry in Canada owns a Beaver. For a reason. Short wingspan, easy to operate in mountainous terrain—to land and take off on the smaller lakes. Peppy engine. Chunky body. Reliable on water, dry ground, ice, snow. The parts are also simple, so they’re easier to repair on the fly, or customize.”

  They reached a clearing along the lake edge. Muddy and slushy. Oskar and his team were already sliding their boat down a concrete ramp into the steel-gray water of Taheese Lake. Mist swirled, and waves kicked up by wind flecked the lake surface. He couldn’t see beyond maybe fifty to a hundred meters.

  An edginess tightened through Mason as Callie drew her truck up alongside Oskar’s rig. So far the evidence in this case pointed to something deeply unusual. Sinister. He was anxious to reach the lodge.

  THE LODGE PARTY

  MONICA

  Monday, October 26.

  “Nathan!” Monica hissed, grabbing her husband’s arm and holding him back in the kitchen while the others went out the rear door and to the shed.

  She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Deborah was not there. The woman had opted to stay behind, but her limp sure had improved, in Monica’s opinion. She was either faking it or milking the injury, and it irritated Monica.

  “What is it?” Nathan asked.

  “You didn’t tell me. About the Tooty-Pops. The bag of groceries from the Kits Corner Store. You didn’t bloody tell me. Why?”

  “Because I knew how much it would upset you, Monica. I was hoping I wouldn’t need to bring it up. But after Jackie going missing, after the plane vanishing—” He, too, looked over his shoulder, and then he lowered his voice further. “Steven was the one who found the bag. And I’d rather the information came from us, Monica. It shows Steven we’re the ones in control here, not him. I wanted to underscore to him, in front of the others, that if he steps out of line, I can damage him. Irreparably.”

  “It would destroy us, too!”

  “Which is why we play dumb about the fact we know anything about the symbolism of that grocery bag.”

  She buried her face in her hands. “Jesus almighty, what are we all coming to?” She looked up. “It’s her, Nathan. I told you so. Oh, Jesus Christ, it is her—the mother. I knew it was.”

  “The mother’s name was not Stella Daguerre.”

  “Are you in full-blown denial? The mother’s name was Estelle Marshall. A married name—she said she lost her marriage. Estelle Marshall was a commercial airline pilot for Pacific Air. She used to fly the Vancouver–Singapore route. And when the media and public opinion took her to task for playing a role in her son’s death, she cracked and went off the rails. She was found half-naked and drunk, wading in the water at Spanish Banks, remember? Screaming at the cameras while she should have been reporting for a flight, and they had to fire her. Based on that, and what the media had dug up on her past.”

  Nathan swallowed. His gaze darted to the kitchen window. Through the grime on the panes they could see the others gathering around a worktable in the shed outside. Monica could see that he wanted to deny it. With every molecule in his body. And so did she. But this was just going to blow up more the longer they were trapped here together. They were doomed.

  Monica said, very quietly, “Stella is short for Estelle. Daguerre is either her maiden name or a fake one. You heard her, Nathan. The incident cost her her marriage and her job. She lost everything.”

  “She looks so different . . . She had long hair. It was dark, thick. She was plumper. Prettier.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Nathan! Listen to yourself. Grief—tragedy—can do that to you. Scoop you hollow from the inside out. Render you a shell of a human.” Tears of empathy pricked into Monica’s eyes. With them came a strangling guilt. She swiped at her running nose with the base of her thumb. “And you do realize who scooped that story about her past, don’t you? You do know who flogged Estelle Marshall for every ounce of emotion she could wring out of public opinion, and who plastered it all over her Facebook page and on message boards? And even on Twitter, which was just getting rolling? You do know who built her own image and popularity on the back of that story, among others?”

  Monica saw reality bite into her husband’s eyes.

  “Katie Colbourne,” he said softly. And then he swore.

  “Katie ripped that poor, grieving woman apart, Nathan. Katie dug deep into Estelle Marshall’s mental history—a fragile one she’d hidden until that point from her airline employer. Katie found Estelle had been hospitalized in a private institution twice before the incident, and Katie learned that social services had visited Estelle once, after a complaint from a neighbor that she was an unfit parent. See? We’re all here because of that incident. The one Steven caused.”

  “And you caused—you are as much to blame.”

  Her face heated. “The one Katie covered. The one Bart helped you cover up—”

  “For you, Monica. I did it for you.”

  “Either way, Bart’s the link. Between the car and you and me. He’s the one who could expose us.”

  “He doesn’t know he’s the link, Monica.”

  “Not yet he doesn’t. It’s a matter of time. He’s already asked you outright if he’d ever done work for you under the table. They all know now that you taught out in Burnaby. That the university is near his workshop. They all know we lived in Kitsilano. When it comes out about the car—if Stella mentions—”

  Nathan grasped her shoulders with both hands. He looked directly into her eyes. “Focus. Do not fall apart now. Don’t. We need to keep our own counsel, keep our secret, or it will all be over.”

  “We did this to her. We did this.” She turned her face away.

  He reached up and gently wiped a tear from her cheek. “Monica, look at me.”

  She turned and gazed up into Nathan’s warm eyes.

  “I love you, Monica. We’ll do this. Together. We’ve come this far. We won’t give in now.”

  For the first time in a long, long while, Monica felt a spurt of love through her chest. It came with a measure of relief. He was taking charge. He was showing Steven his place. And he was doing it for her—it had all been about her from the start. And right at this very moment, she loved Nathan for being Nathan. Her geeky professor who cherished his mushrooms. When all the chips were down, he was the one still there. He’d always had her back. She’d been awful to him, cheated on him, and he’d forgiven her and stuck by her.

  He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. She leaned into him.

  “And listen, Monica—” He stroked her hair. “It still might just be a weird connection, and not really about that day at all. Because no one knew about us. Not even the cops found out.”

  Monica pulled back suddenly as it struck her. “Do you think it’s her? That she lured us here?”

  “Stella?”

  “For revenge.”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. “You saw her face when I mentioned the groceries. She was in utter shock.”

  “She could have faked it? Maybe she hid her plane during the night. Maybe—”

  “No. Look—no one knew about us. Not even the cops.”

  “Jackie Blunt said she worked for Dan Whitlock, who was a PI. Maybe those two are in on it, faked their own deaths, and are just waiting for us
to confess.”

  “Quiet,” he said. “Enough. This is why we can’t mention a thing. All we can do is hold strong. Me. You. Steven. Not say a word. Because even if someone suspects, there is no proof. Can’t be. Not after all these years.”

  “Bart. He is the connection, the proof. Between you and me and my damaged blue BMW that the police were hunting for.” Monica cursed and pushed her hair back off her face. She was so goddamn sick of the strain of keeping this secret that she almost wanted to confess, for this all to come out. Finally. She wanted to see Steven dragged off in handcuffs. She hated that she’d ever fucked him. And that she’d let him drive away from the scene in her car. That she’d been so terrified, so horrified, that she’d frozen in the passenger seat. And even later she could have come forward, but she was too scared. Afraid Nathan and their kids would find out about their affair. Afraid Steven’s wife would hear about it. Afraid of what the police would do to her. What would happen to her business, her employees, her life. Her friends. Her fancy house in Kitsilano. So she’d cowered in the shadows, and while Stella—a victim—was grilled, she and Steven had gotten away with killing an innocent and beautiful six-year-old boy whose name was Ezekiel Marshall, and who loved Tooty-Pops and Snickers bars. Whose mother had left him briefly outside a liquor store that forbade minors and dogs. She’d left her child holding a grocery bag and his puppy on a leash on a sidewalk in a safe, classy neighborhood, on a dark and wet autumn afternoon. And while his mother had been paying the cashier for a bottle of chardonnay, little Ezekiel, who was hugging the grocery bag against his chest, had allowed his grip on the pup’s lead to slacken. The animal had been distracted by something down the sidewalk, and taken off. Ezekiel had run after it. The pup had ducked between two parked cars and darted across the road, where it was darker. The child followed.

  The memory of the thump shuddered through Monica’s body.