In the Dark

by Loreth Anne White

She wondered if the fourteen-inch meat cleaver had been positioned on the chopping board alongside all the knives for a similar purpose. And the gun on the wall with the box of bullets in the desk drawer. Perhaps the intent was to scare them with the rhyme, mess with their heads by isolating them, force them to turn on each other in fear, all fueled by their own guilt. By their own Monsters, which lived inside each one of them.

  And these tools had all been laid out as temptations, leaving them to choose how to use them.

  The clock began to gong. Deborah jumped. It boomed seven times. The interior of the lodge was dark, lit by only one shivering lantern in the great room. No fire in the hearth. No one had come in to make it. Cold was crawling in under the doors and pressing through the thin windowpanes.

  Deborah could go and build the fire. But she seemed unable to move away from the window, ensnared by the orange vignette in the blackness outside. Terror clutched at her heart.

  She heard Jackie Blunt’s words inside her head again.

  “You remind me of someone. Kat . . . Kata . . . Katarina, I think her name was . . . I know that tattoo . . . A swallow. I’ve seen that ink . . . I’ve spoken to her. I know her voice.”

  She watched as Nathan found a bottle of booze on a shelf in the shed. He showed it to the other two. They seemed to be debating whether it was safe to drink. Nathan showed them the seal, then cracked it open.

  They quaffed from the bottle in turns. Wiped mouths with backs of wrists. The three of them. Stella, Steven, Nathan. Bonded by something horrific, as if unclean, forever unable to go back and join the normal people of the world. They passed the bottle around again.

  Deborah cast her mind back further. To the black-haired, solid woman with coarse skin and ruddy cheeks and a stench of cigars on her clothes. The woman who’d found Deborah via her pimp, who controlled the sex workers plying their trade in that area. It was a classy neighborhood on the fringe of the downtown core, a neighborhood of men with money, quite a few who also secretly liked their fucks with spanks and whips. Men who pretended they were normal fathers and sons and husbands, but who were no better than the rest. The woman’s words crawled up from some dark place into Deborah’s memory.

  “I know it was you on that street corner that night, Katarina. Your pimp confirmed it. He told the PI who hired me where to find you. He said it was your night for that corner. Yeah, Kitty Kat, every man has his price. Even your pimp. He told me it was you who witnessed the little kid getting squished. You saw the blue BMW. You saw two people inside—a man and a woman. You took the license plate. And you took little Ezekiel Marshall’s backpack, didn’t you?”

  She’d needed a fix. Like bad. So bad. No one knew how bad it could be unless they’d been there. They just couldn’t imagine it. Deborah had been ready to kill for the fix that the rough-skinned woman had dangled in front of her that day. She’d needed it just to survive long enough to turn some trick so she could score more.

  “Your pimp is going to cut you off, Katarina. But you can have this, and this envelope of cash here—it’s unmarked, been cleaned, and there’s plenty in here, but you need to give me that BMW license plate, and then you need to fuck off out of this town, like tonight. You take this money and go live somewhere else. You got that? You put one shitty stiletto boot toe back into the Greater Vancouver area, and you’re dead, you hear me? If I find someone with that tat is in town, you die. Okay? And I will know. I will hear. Because your pimp will tell. Because there will be a shitload more money and drugs for him if he sees you, or hears about you, and he comes and tells me. It’s called incentive.”

  “Who . . . who are you?”

  “I’m here to keep you quiet, Kitty Kat.”

  “I . . . I won’t speak. I promise. I haven’t spoken to the cops yet, have I?”

  “Because they haven’t found you yet. You split out of town and they won’t.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because someone who was driving that BMW is paying someone to pay someone to pay me to shut you up.” The woman smiled, angled her head. “Simple, right? It’s called compartmentalization. Understand?”

  Deborah had been shaking so hard, so desperate for a fix, that she’d barely been able to keep her hands steady enough to dig in her closet, find the battered vanity license plate, and hand it over. She’d taken the fat envelope and opened it. She’d been shocked. There’d been more money in that envelope than she’d seen in her life. She’d reached for the bag of drugs.

  The woman had yanked it back.

  “If the cops—”

  “I don’t speak to cops.” Her pimp would have her killed if she did. She was underage. Another girl had vanished, and Deborah had been certain he’d done it.

  “Where does the money come from?” Deborah asked. “The driver?”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  Deborah took it.

  “Now run, you little whore. Fuck off and run.”

  Tears pricked as Deborah recalled that day from her past when Jackie Blunt had visited her with an envelope of money and a packet of drugs. Back when Jackie Blunt’s hair had been thick and shiny black. But Deborah was dry inside, well beyond crying now. She placed a hand on her stomach, where her baby slept in innocence, a child of her own, a life she’d never dreamed possible. She’d been a mess back then. A total wreck. She was surprised she even recalled what the woman looked like who’d come to her door that day.

  But after Jackie Blunt had stared at her in the floatplane, and started saying things like she recognized the tattoo . . . after she’d mentioned the name Katarina, Deborah had known. Deborah had remembered.

  In some bizarre trick of fate, her nemesis had been put on that floatplane with her and sent to this place. To be trapped. Like Katie Colbourne had said—with all the other people involved in Ezekiel Marshall’s hit-and-run death. And as Deborah watched the trio in the shed, she figured that the driver of that BMW had to have been Steven Bodine.

  He was the man she’d seen behind the wheel. And he had the kind of money and connections to hire a PI to hunt her down. A PI like Dan Whitlock, who’d in turn hired a woman like Jackie Blunt to strong-arm her into permanent silence.

  The woman in the passenger seat must have been Monica. Because it hadn’t been Katie Colbourne in that seat, and Stella was the mother.

  Deborah hadn’t seen the mother properly that day. She hadn’t watched the news, either. She’d snatched the backpack and license plate because the opportunity had presented itself, and because the kid looked dead already. There could’ve been something of value in that backpack—something she could have sold for cash. And cash bought drugs. She’d taken the plate because that’s what she did at the time. Took things. And things could be used for leverage. Blackmail. She’d been right. Someone had wanted to pay big to get that plate back.

  After Jackie Blunt’s visit, she’d fled to Victoria on the island. But it wasn’t long before Katarina ran into trouble there, too. She’d stabbed another street worker who’d tried to move into her territory. She’d actually sliced her up pretty bad. It landed her in prison.

  Best thing that had ever happened to her, prison.

  It had been rough at first. But a mentor had taken her under her wing for “favors.” After that she was left alone. Behind bars she’d managed to go sober, clean. She’d taken courses. She’d come out and joined a social program that hired ex-cons for cleaning jobs, and she’d slowly pulled herself right. When she’d found it impossible to get a job in a top hotel, because of her record, she’d changed her name and started her own company that contracted employees out. Where she was the boss and no potential employer would ever ask her again about a criminal record.

  As the memories that Deborah had tried so hard to suppress, to bury, surfaced like a tsunami inside her, her body began to shake.

  She pressed her hand down harder on her tummy.

  Her own baby.

  She needed to survive. Anything to survive.

  They were co
ming inside now, walking through the slush toward the kitchen door. Panic kicked her. She spun around and hurriedly opened cupboards, found cans. Stew. Chili. She got out a pot and started the gas stove.

  They’d be hungry. They’d need food. She had to keep pretending she knew nothing and she’d be safe. She had never been there. She hadn’t seen the driver, or the passenger. She had not seen the little boy hit, or the mother screaming out of the store. She never watched news. She didn’t know the mother was Stella.

  Stella, who’d lost her baby boy. Her child.

  A sob choked Deborah. She braced her hands on the counter, fighting to control herself.

  The door opened. She wiped her nose, spun around. Swallowed.

  They looked apocalyptic. Survivors of a zombie war in the wilderness. She cringed inside, almost wanting to take a step back. But the counter was behind her.

  They stared at her as if she were suddenly just as alien to them as they were to her.

  “I . . . I’m sorry I didn’t come out to help.” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat. “I . . . Monica told me what happened, and . . . I’ve never seen a dead body,” she lied. “So I’m making supper instead. I thought you . . . you’d be hungry.”

  They walked past Deborah, Stella holding the bottle. It was whiskey.

  Deborah suddenly heard the thud of the BMW hitting the little boy. She hadn’t heard it for more than a decade. Thud. Thud. Thud. Over and over. It wouldn’t stop. She rammed her hands over her ears.

  Stop. Stop. Stop.

  Stella glanced over her shoulder. Their eyes met.

  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

  “I’ll bring the stew.”

  “Thanks, Deborah,” said Stella.

  Deborah entered the living room carrying bowls of soup on a tray.

  Nathan looked up from the sofa. His eyes were red. He was filthy with blood and muck and hadn’t wiped any off. He sat with the open bottle of whiskey between his thighs, his hand clutching the bottle neck.

  “Your ankle?” he said, his gaze lowering to her legs.

  “It . . . it’s much better. Fine. I bandaged it tight.”

  Steven was lighting the fire. Stella was coming down the stairs. She’d tried to clean up—washed some of the blood off her hands and face and put on some clean clothes. The men hadn’t bothered.

  Monica and Katie were not down yet.

  Deborah stood with the tray. Unsure. Rattled to the core. Her life upended. Besieged by the terrible looming fear she was going to tumble all the way back to the beginning, become Katarina again. And she couldn’t, just couldn’t.

  I’d rather die.

  Steven came to her, took the heavy tray from her.

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded. And she almost felt bad for him. He’s suffering the same thing I am. He’s trying to hide his past. That kid ran into the road from between two cars, right in front of him—he’d been doomed to hit Ezekiel. Nine Little Liars thought they’d got away. But they hadn’t, and they were all going back to hell.

  Rattling bowls and spoons with shaky, tired arms, Steven set the tray down on the coffee table next to the checkerboard. As he did, he froze.

  “The carvings.” His voice came out hoarse. It shot a chill through Deborah.

  “The carvings. Two—” He spun around. His face gaunt. He pointed.

  “Two more. Not just one for Bart. Two.”

  Nathan jerked forward as if shocked by a bolt of electrical current. “Monica?” he said. He spun his head round. “Where is Monica?” He lurched up, knocking the bottle of whiskey onto the floor. He ran for the stairs. “Monica!” he yelled as he grasped the handrail.

  Nothing.

  He thudded drunkenly up the steps.

  “Monica!” he yelled again, louder, as he reached the landing. His voice boomed through the house. It tossed the name back at them, echoing up into the vaulted ceiling and roof trusses. Dust sifted down.

  The others left their soup and hurried upstairs after Nathan. Deborah followed.

  As Nathan reached his and Monica’s bedroom door, it swung open.

  Monica stood there with swollen, red-rimmed eyes and mussed hair, confusion in her features. “I . . . I was sleeping. What is it, Nathan? God, look at you. Are you all right?”

  He made a weird noise and gathered her into his arms. “Oh, thank God, thank you, thank you. You’re all right.”

  She pushed him away, her nostrils flaring at the stink on him. “What is it—what’s going on?”

  “Another figurine has been decapitated,” Steven said.

  Monica looked at the others. “You mean for Bart.”

  “No, another.”

  They all registered at once. Stella lunged for Katie Colbourne’s door. It was locked.

  “Katie!” Stella banged, rattled the handle. “Katie!” She turned to them. “Help me. Help me bust open this door.”

  The men put the weight of their shoulders into it. Whammed. Again and again. The wood of the door splintered against the lock, and it blew open. The two men tumbled inside and staggered, flailing, into the middle of the room.

  Deborah and Stella rushed in behind them.

  They all stopped dead in their tracks.

  Katie hung from a rope hooked over a rafter. A chair had been overturned near her feet. Her camera lay on the bed.

  She swayed there, facing the giant oil painting of the little girl carrying the scales of justice. The canvas had been slashed to ribbons. A kitchen knife lay on the wooden floor beneath the painting.

  Deborah sagged and fainted.

  THE SEARCH

  MASON

  Tuesday, November 3.

  Everyone in the SAR team had retired into their tents, apart from Mason and Callie, who were still up. They sat close, in front of a fire the SAR guys had built in a small encampment in the old-growth forest, well away from the lodge. Orange flames crackled and shot yellow sparks up into the night. The rain had abated, but the low clouds remained dense. No sign of stars or moonlight. Every now and then they heard the soft hooo of an owl.

  It had been almost six hours since Mason had placed a satellite call to headquarters in Prince George. Crime scene techs, a coroner, homicide detectives, and other personnel would start arriving at first light. Mason’s job was to protect the integrity of the scene until the ident crews got here.

  Oskar had been the last of the SAR techs to leave the campfire and crawl into his tent. Sounds of snoring had come quickly from inside his orange dome.

  “He has the ability to do that,” Callie said quietly as she poked a stick into the flames. “I find it tough to sleep while out on a mission. And this . . . Usually we search for people who’ve had an unfortunate accident, or made stupid mistakes. But this—this sense of malice, of malicious intent, murder . . .” Her words died on her lips. They felt rhetorical, so Mason left it there, allowing her to process the fact that they were camping not far from two murdered victims who’d been packed into a freezer for some reason.

  The female victim wrapped in a sheet and lying atop the other victim had in Mason’s preliminary judgment—from as much as he’d been able to see without disturbing the evidence—been hanged. There were ligature marks around her neck, a protruding tongue, and petechiae—red pinpoint dots in her eyeballs. There’d also been part of a rope hanging from a rafter in a bedroom that contained female belongings. He’d found no ID among the things in the room, but from the photo of the group gathered in front of the plane, he’d deduced the decedent was likely Katie Colbourne.

  The body that had been placed into the freezer below the female victim, Mason had left untouched. It had been bound up in a bloody and muddied blue tarp with rope. He’d have to leave that for when the crime scene guys arrived.

  Oskar had shown Mason drag marks and prints that led to a game trail in the woods. From the trace, Oskar believed the body in the tarp had been dragged to the shed from some distance in the forest. Prints showed that three people had done the dragging
. They’d get a better read of the prints in daylight. They’d likely be able to trace them back to a possible murder scene. Oskar and his crew had also found additional prints heading along another trail closer to the water. There was a chance that trace could belong to the remaining survivors who’d left the lodge. Callie’s plan was to follow those tracks in the morning.

  After setting up camp, the group had eaten military-style, ready-to-eat rations warmed over the fire, and they’d consumed their meals mostly in silence, conscious of the vastness of the wilderness pressing in around them, the bodies in the freezer, and the gravity of it all.

  “It’s bizarre,” Callie said. She looked at him directly, and Mason felt an odd little clutch in his gut when his gaze met hers.

  “The carvings,” she said. “The rhyme. The photoshopped lodge and spa development, the apparently nonexistent RAKAM Group. Two bodies in a freezer. One nonpilot in the pilot seat of a chartered floatplane with a vintage knife in her neck. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “Not like this,” Mason said.

  “Why do you think someone went to the trouble of even putting those two bodies into the freezer?”

  A log fell in the fire, shooting a soft shower of sparks up into the damp night.

  “Well, it looks like the generator had been running,” Mason said. “Presumably to chill the remains until it ran out of gas. So it would appear they—or someone—wanted to preserve the bodies. Rather than just hide them.”

  “And it was likely more than one person,” she said. “Because it would have been a challenge for someone to get those two bodies up and into that chest solo, no? And there’s the trace that shows three people possibly dragging the body in the tarpaulin.”

  “You’re right.” He smiled. “You’d have been a good detective.”

  She stopped poking the fire and studied his face. “You’re patronizing me.”

  He laughed. “No. Actually, I think you’d probably have made a good cop all round.”

  She regarded him for a beat, weighing the sincerity and intent of his words. She turned her face back to the fire, said quietly, “SAR work is detective work. Wilderness-style, usually. Profiling the lost is like victimology in many ways. If you understand a person, it can help you guess what happened, and what decisions the victims might have made when faced with certain wilderness obstacles, or terrain, or weather, or injuries. Which can help you figure out the best area of probability to find them. Alive, hopefully. But dealing with homicides—I don’t know how you can stomach that intent to harm, premeditated or otherwise, over and over again, and still be normal.”