In the Dark

by Loreth Anne White

  She looked up at Oskar. “Stella Daguerre’s next of kin has not yet been located, but she did leave a pair of running shoes in a bag in the lodge room she occupied. Her bag contained some ID, so we’re assuming it was her room. The running shoes in the room are a size eight. So these two smaller-size sets—the one with the starburst pattern, and the one with the triangles—must belong to either Deborah or Monica.” Callie labeled her renderings of the starburst and triangle lug patterns Deb-Mon. She labeled the size 8 pattern as Stella. The men had larger feet—a size 10 and size 12.

  The RCMP tracking dog started to bark nearby. The officer called for them to come over.

  Callie shut and pocketed her notebook, snapped a last photo, then followed Oskar to where the German shepherd was lunging into her harness at the end of a tracking lead. The cop held on tight. “She’s picked up their scent going that way.” He pointed at a gap in the bushes—a barely there trail led deeper into the forest relatively parallel to the lake shore.

  Oskar said to Callie, “Got all the sketches down?”

  She nodded and tilted her chin toward the trail. “Looks like it shouldn’t be too much of a challenge with the dog on their scent. As long as we don’t lose it. We should move now. We’ve got enough. Let’s gather our gear. I’ll check with Mason, see if he’s ready to leave.”

  Callie hurried back along the trail toward the lodge, adrenaline coursing through her system. She felt as edgy as that tracking K9 to get on the trail of the Survivor Five. The rain might change to snow again soon, and they could lose the small advantage they had.

  She reached the crime scene boundary demarcated by the yellow tape and was stopped by a uniformed officer.

  “Callie Sutton, Kluhane Bay SAR,” she said, showing her ID. “I need to speak to Sergeant Mason Deniaud.”

  She could see Mason near the back door of the lodge, talking to one of the crime scene guys dressed in white Tyvek coveralls and booties. In nitrile-gloved hands Mason held what looked to Callie like a bowl.

  She watched Mason and the forensic ident guys as the uniform went over to fetch him. The boiler-suited techs were placing little scene markers outside the shed and taking photographs. One of the huge military-style tents had been erected to cover the area between the lodge kitchen and the shed with the freezer.

  She was fascinated. It was like SAR work, but different, of course. But it offered the same buzz, that urgent need to solve a big puzzle with stakes of life and death. The kind of thing that took her mind out of her everyday-life worries. She used to share this zing with Peter each time they got a callout. As her mind turned to Peter, she was slammed by a hard wave of grief. So strong and dark it stopped her breath.

  She looked away and tried to inhale, then exhale, to recalibrate. The pain, the sense of loss, of fear—it would hit out of nowhere. She’d learned this. She’d also learned to accept it, and to bow under it, give in to it, because the harder she tried to shove it away, the harder it hit next time around, and it would be all the more debilitating.

  She’d had plenty of well-meaning advice. But most of that advice was designed for permanent loss of a loved one.

  Peter was still here.

  She still believed he could come back.

  “Callie?”

  She spun around. Mason was coming over. He carried what looked like a bowl of mushrooms in his gloved hands.

  As he neared, she saw what they were. She shot him a hard look. “Did someone ingest any of those?”

  “Do you know what kind they are?” he asked, holding them out for her to examine.

  “They look like death caps. Where did you find them?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  She met his gaze. “They don’t grow here. Or not that we’ve seen so far. Doesn’t mean we wouldn’t find them if we looked, only that they haven’t yet been reported by someone who knows their fungi. But incidents of Amanita phalloides poisoning have been increasing across BC. Caused the death of a toddler near Vancouver last year, and a woman in the ski resort of Whistler ate one from her backyard and was seriously poisoned. And she thought she knew her mushrooms.” As Callie spoke, it struck her.

  “You said the detectives this morning informed you Dr. Nathan McNeill was a professor of mycology?”

  “Yeah.” As Mason spoke, an ident tech came over to take the mushrooms into evidence. He handed them over.

  “Nathan McNeill would have known what those are,” Callie said.

  Mason looked at her with interest. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, it’s a poison that could be used to kill someone. You also said there was evidence that someone had been seriously ill inside the lodge.”

  “Evidence suggests Dr. Steven Bodine had a gastroenteritic attack. Both diarrhea and emesis in the bathroom adjoining the room in which we found his belongings showed signs of being grossly bloody.”

  “If that gastroenteritis was caused by Dr. Bodine ingesting part of a death cap . . . that could be it.” Energy speared into Callie.

  “Could be Dr. Nathan McNeill poisoned him,” Mason said. “If these don’t grow around here, there remains the possibility McNeill brought them on the trip with intent.”

  “And,” Callie said, “it could be a reason the Survivor Five might have felt compelled to leave their shelter. To get help.”

  Mason frowned. “How so?”

  “KSAR was sent a brief last summer on the pathogenesis of death cap ingestion. The information originated from the BC Centre for Disease Control because the mushroom is potentially becoming a hazard across this province, and it was felt search and rescue should be aware of the signs. If Dr. Bodine ate a death cap, or part of one, he would’ve developed severe gastric problems, but after about six hours he’d appear recovered. That’s the lag phase. But Dr. McNeill, a mycology expert, might well have known that the damage had been done. And that the poison would still silently be destroying Dr. Bodine’s liver. If this is what happened, the only chance for Dr. Bodine’s survival would be medical intervention. Or he’s as good as dead right now.”

  “So his health would be worsening on the trail right now? If he’s not deceased already, given the time frame?”

  “Yes. My guess is they’re probably trying to get around the northwest side of Taheese Lake,” Callie said. “Stella Daguerre, as their pilot, would have gotten a good orientation from the air. She would most certainly be aiming them toward Kluhane Bay.”

  The wind gusted, bringing a fresh deluge of rain. Mason regarded Callie with intensity, his eyes as gray as the clouds.

  “We need to move. Now,” he said quietly. “We can coordinate with the RCMP command base and air support for backup as we go.”

  THE SEARCH

  MASON

  They hiked single file and moved fast, thanks to the German shepherd, Trudy, and her RCMP handler, Ray Gregson, who remained hot on the scent.

  Mason took up the rear of the column, behind Callie. In front of Callie were two other SAR techs. Oskar hiked directly behind the K9 team, muttering about how the police dog and handler were messing up “his” footprints. But Callie had made the call to follow the dog’s nose rather than man-track from print to print. A good chunk of time had elapsed since the Survivor Five appeared to have left the lodge, and in open terrain without tree cover, prints would be obscured by rain and snow.

  The other SAR techs had remained behind on standby to provide support from the air as spotters if the weather lifted enough to enable a chopper to fly into the mountain peaks along the northwest side of the lake, where the tracks led.

  The team kept the pace for several hours, breathing hard, clouds of mist forming around their faces. With each kilometer, each hour, each minute longer, Mason was increasingly cognizant that time was running out for the group, especially Dr. Steven Bodine, if the assumption that the surgeon had ingested death caps was correct. That the mushrooms had been left in a bowl on the kitchen counter was ominous in itself. A warning? A sign left behind for rescuers? Maybe the mu
shrooms and poisoning had been mentioned in the missing note?

  Caution on the part of the SAR crew tracking the Survivor Five was also warranted. The five likely had a rifle and ammunition among them. Possibly taken to protect themselves against wildlife, or conceivably to hunt for food. But there remained the sinister fact that the message had been ripped out of the notebook on the coffee table.

  One among the group could prove hostile.

  Mason was armed with a sidearm and carried a rifle on his back with his pack. As did the RCMP dog handler. Oskar carried a shotgun. For protection against wildlife. There were grizzlies in this region, he’d said. Wolves and mountain lions, too.

  Mason checked his watch. It was 2:34 p.m., and their column still moved at a choppy trot along the overgrown and uneven trail that led through forests and across shale slopes and scree, and through occasional meadows and marsh areas. The pack on his back, combined with his heavy boots, jacket, and regulation bullet-suppression vest, was testing the limits of his fitness and endurance, both of which had flagged since his return from his Australian “walkabout” after Jen and Luke’s accident tore apart his life. Perspiration began to break out over his body, and his muscles protested. But he’d also settled into a rhythm, lungs burning as he breathed the clean, cold air in deep. And it became meditative. It gave him a quiet endorphin buzz, and it distracted him in good ways. It made him feel alive.

  It was likely a game trail they were following, Callie had explained. But it was clear the survivors had come this way, not only from the scent the dog was picking up, but from the odd prints, dislodged stones, crushed vegetation, and broken twigs along the track.

  Mason watched Callie in front of him, liking the way she moved, enjoying the intensity of her focus, her contagious energy, the way her job and surroundings absorbed her, the way she remained constantly alert to noises, signs, changes in the terrain and weather. The way pink color rose in her cheeks, and the cold made her eyes bright. She was adept in this environment. It was her world. Mason figured if you dropped Callie Sutton from a chopper alone into this wilderness, she’d find her way home. Alive.

  But him? While he could retrace his route in a city using landmarks like any regular urbanite—a McDonald’s here, a Starbucks there, a department store entrance on the corner, the tiny sushi place, a Korean restaurant near a busy intersection—out here landmarks were a big Douglas fir near a slope with a northerly aspect, a glimpse of water and a certain peak suddenly visible through clouds, a change in the flora showing increased elevation. It offered a different sense of space and orientation.

  Up ahead the dog suddenly veered off the trail and went casting her nose about up a slope that led to a clearing on a plateau.

  “Whoa!” Officer Gregson held Trudy back and raised his hand. He indicated the new direction. “Going to take a look!” Gregson called.

  Oskar called a halt, and they watched as the K9 team left the trail, crashing up through brush.

  “That’s the thing about dogs,” Callie said with a grin as they watched Gregson stumbling and falling after his lunging K9. “If they’re air scenting as opposed to print-to-print tracking, they ignore the easy path and go as the scent blows from a distance. The subjects probably walked up to that ridge using a far easier approach.”

  The handler reined Trudy in again when they reached the plateau. “Sign of a camp up here!” he called down to them.

  They proceeded to climb up the incline to the clearing at the plateau. Oskar asked them all to stand back while he closely examined the trace on the ground beneath a large fir. Oskar picked something out of the dirt. He held it up.

  “ChapStick.”

  Mason moved forward and took it from Oskar. He showed it to Callie.

  “Regular old lip balm,” she said. He bagged it.

  “Looks like the Survivor Five’s first camp,” Oskar said, pointing to more trace on the ground. “They sat here, and it looks like they rested awhile, maybe lay down, judging by the markings and changes in this vegetative ground cover. Also a wrapper from a granola bar.” He picked it up with his gloved hand.

  Mason took it from him. “Probably came from the lodge cupboards or one of their bags,” he said as he bagged and recorded it.

  “So you think they spent a night here, Oskar?” Callie asked, looking up at the giant fir. “Tree would have provided some shelter.”

  “Possible,” Oskar said, continuing his careful examination of the ground while Gregson watered and rested Trudy. “If this was their camp for the first night, it would mean we’re moving a lot faster than they were.” The Norwegian glanced up, his blue eyes bright. “That’s good because we will catch up, but not so good if it’s illness or injury that was slowing them down.”

  There was no overt sign, however, that anyone had continued to throw up along the trail since leaving the lodge.

  Mason took photos, logged the GPS location for forensics.

  “We keep moving,” Callie said, uncapping her water bottle and taking a sip.

  Oskar ate a snack bar, and one of the other techs offered around some nuts.

  As Oskar chewed, he said, “I’m still seeing signs of five different print sets. At this point they were all still on the move.”

  After another two hours on the track, Oskar called them all to a halt again so he could study some particularly clear prints preserved in claylike mud. Using his pole and the rubber rings to mark stride length again, he worked carefully over the clay patch.

  “They were getting tired,” he said. “Their strides are shortening.”

  “Still five sets?” Mason asked.

  “Affirmative,” said Oskar.

  “No sign anyone else followed behind them?”

  Oskar examined the ground in silence, measuring tracks that Mason could barely even see with his own eyes. This was an arcane art, he thought, this man-tracking. Finally Oskar came to his feet and pushed his cap back on his head.

  “Got the starburst pattern. Got the size eight, and the other female, size seven. And the two larger male sets. No one else that I can see.”

  The image of the corpses in the freezer surfaced in Mason’s mind. If an unidentified subject outside of this group of five had killed Bart Kundera and Katie Colbourne, the killer did not appear to be following and hunting the fleeing Survivor Five now.

  Which left the possibility that one or more among the group were killers.

  Or that the killer had left them alone for some reason.

  Callie lifted her scopes and scanned the trail that climbed ahead.

  “From here it continues up,” she said. “We’ll see if we can reach that ridge up there before nightfall.” She pointed. “That vantage point will offer us a sweeping view, and judging from the terrain, the trail will head from that ridge back down toward the water. We’ll set up camp for the night at the ridge.”

  Mason opened his water bottle, swallowed. Cold water had never tasted so good. As he capped his canteen, he said, “So those poor subjects had to go uphill.”

  “Clearly,” Callie said, securing her binoculars to her pack. “From my recollection, there used to be remnants of a game trail along the lake that would have bypassed climbing the ridge, but water levels have been rising in Taheese Lake over the last few years. Lots of snow, warmer temperatures causing glacier melt. And a lot of precip over the past few days as well.” She tented her gloved hand over her eyes as she studied the mountains around them. “My worry is the streams and waterfalls coming down into the lake right now might give us access issues.”

  “Would be same for the subjects, though. If the rivers stop us, they would also have stopped them.”

  She pursed her lips and nodded. “Although the creek and river volumes can change by the hour. Flash floods are also possible. And the avalanche chutes are tough to navigate—all conditions that could cause injury or worse. But you’re correct. If obstacles held the subjects back, hopefully they were smart enough to wait things out or turn back.”

&nb
sp; “At Dr. Bodine’s expense,” Oskar added.

  “Triage.” Callie hefted her pack back up onto her shoulders. “But triage requires logic and hard decisions. Most lost subjects, if they’re inexperienced, act on panic and push through at their own expense. The cost can be death.”

  As the group set off again, they kept an even faster pace. The incline grew steeper. Mason’s muscles and joints started feeling the strain. The searchers fell silent. Mist blew in again, and precipitation turned thicker, wavering between rain and sleet.

  THE SEARCH

  CALLIE

  By 4:00 p.m. the search party was navigating a tricky avalanche chute—an obstacle course littered with giant boulders, scree, shale, mud, fallen trees, and unearthed root balls of old-growth trees that were the size of a small car.

  Tattered curtains of cloud raked through the valley, dragging swaths of sleet. Desolate. Cold. But for Callie it still held majestic beauty. Perhaps because it was powerful, inhospitable. To reach this kind of natural beauty—to see and touch and experience it in person—required a human to dig deep into physical and mental reserves. To Callie the payoff was exponential.

  RCMP officer Gregson was carrying his dog in a harness over a particularly steep and unstable slope of scree that would break Trudy’s leg should her paw slip into any of the many deep gaps in the moving stones. But they were still making good time, all bolstered by the fact that K9 Trudy was still on the scent. And Oskar was still finding physical trace showing that the group had passed this way. Mason had also received word via sat phone that a chopper with a forward-looking infrared—FLIR—system and instruments-flying capability was being dispatched from CFB Comox to assist from the air. It would be fully dark by the time the helicopter arrived, but Callie knew that FLIR often worked best to pick up heat trace from subjects when temperatures fell. Even so, it would require luck and expertise to pick up heat signatures if the subjects had gone into deep gullies or were sheltering beneath dense old-growth canopy. But given that her team was still seeing signs at this point, and all five appeared to be alive and on the move, it would improve the odds. Because long-dead people did not emit a heat signature.