In the Dark

by Loreth Anne White

  “And then?” Sergeant Deniaud prompts. His eyes are kind, but he’s a cop. He’s playing good cop right now. While the others watching via the camera are assessing me.

  “And then we heard wolves. We believed they were following us and closing in because they were sensing our weakness. We were scared. No more food. Temperatures dropping. We’d gotten wet from crossing the gorge. We finally came to a grove in old-growth forest. It was a flattish area. And under the dense canopy of old trees it was drier, a little warmer, more protected from the wind and rain. We managed to make a fire. We were there for two days. Everyone went mad under those trees. We became a feral group. Turning on each other. That’s when Monica snapped. And then Stella went sort of wild, crazy, aiming that rifle at us, saying we all had to pay, we all had to say sorry. She said she’d brought us all out there to die. She confessed to everything.”

  “Everything?”

  I blink. I’m unsure what he wants.

  “She . . . Yes, she confessed to killing Jackie Blunt—”

  “So you know that Jackie Blunt is dead?”

  Panic whips. “I . . . Well, that’s what Stella told us.”

  “How did she kill Jackie?”

  “With a knife she took from Bart Kundera’s room. She stuck it in Jackie’s neck.” I pause. “Twice. She said she stabbed twice.”

  His gaze holds mine.

  I place my hand on my tummy.

  “What else did Stella confess to?”

  “Cutting the plane free. Killing Bart Kundera with the meat cleaver. Bringing the mushrooms with her from the island where she lived. Leaving them on the kitchen counter for Nathan and everyone to see. So Nathan could use his knowledge to terrify everyone. She put the checkerboard there, and she cut the heads off the carvings. The painting in Katie’s room. The rhyme—she wrote it. She put the book there.” I fall silent. My blood booms in my ears.

  “What about Katie Colbourne?”

  I nod. “Yes. She hung Katie—she said she hung Katie.”

  “Must have been difficult.”

  I’m beginning to shake. Deep inside. “She . . . she said she forced Katie up onto a chair by threatening her. With a knife. She threatened Katie by saying she’d hurt her daughter.”

  “How—what threats exactly?”

  “She didn’t tell us.”

  He angles his head slightly. “So Stella told everyone she’d done these things.”

  I nod.

  “And then?”

  “And then Steven lunged at her, for the gun.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She shot him.”

  “Where?”

  I inhale, memories slicing through my brain. I wince as I hear the gunshots again. Tears fill my eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Deborah. I need to ask.”

  I nod, moisten my lips. “In the face—she shot him right in the face. Again in the chest. Nathan tried to scramble backward, away from her. He was sitting near the fire. She shot him, too. Through the neck.” I clear my throat. “Monica fled into the trees. As she was running, stumbling, screaming, Stella fired. Into her back. She went down and—” My voice chokes. With a shaking hand I push hair back from my eyes. “Monica McNeill crawled, crying, into the forest. I . . . I didn’t even think. I picked up a rock from near the fire, and screamed and hit Stella in the back of the head.” I swallow. “Hard.”

  He watches me. I feel the others behind the camera watching, too. I feel time ticking slowly. I’m hot, my skin is hot. So hot.

  “Then?”

  “Then I ran. Away. I left her lying there, and just ran.”

  “Where’s the rifle?”

  I blink.

  “Stella fell down on top of the rifle. I thought I had killed her. I was terrified, I just ran, but she wasn’t dead. She got up and came after me with the gun. She chased me. I heard her coming after I’d gone quite a distance. She was moving faster than me. She was gaining on me. We got to the river.”

  “Did she fire at you while you were running?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Think. Think very clearly, Deborah. Bolt-action rifle. Holds four rounds, plus one in the chamber for a total of five. Four shots were fired in the grove. Two into Steven, one into Nathan, one into Monica. There would be casings there. Four of them. One bullet left in the gun that Stella was chasing you with . . .

  “No. I don’t think so. Maybe she did, but I was in a blind panic, and I didn’t hear a shot that I can recall.”

  “And when you reached the river?”

  “She’d gained on me. She came wading fast into the river after me.”

  “Was she bleeding?”

  I nod. “From where I hit her head with the rock. Blood pouring down her face, and into her eye sockets, mixing with the rain. She looked like a mad animal. She grabbed me, and I went down into the water. We grappled and fought, and I got the gun. I . . . I shot her.”

  He doesn’t blink.

  “Where?” he asks quietly.

  “In the shoulder. I think.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She . . . Stella looked shocked. She stopped fighting. She put her hand to her shoulder, and staggered, and the current—it was swift—it was tugging at our legs—it unbalanced her. She went down. Into the water. I . . .” Tears stream down my face. I can’t talk.

  He pushes a box of tissues toward me. I reach for one, blow my nose.

  “Take your time.”

  I nod. Blow again. “I . . . saw her floating. Facedown. Hair flowing about her head. Blood staining the water around her. The river took her. Fast. Down toward the noise of the rapids. Or waterfall. I think there must have been a waterfall. I was . . . I couldn’t think. I kept the gun, and I got out of the river on the other side. I kept running. It was thick with fog. I . . . I didn’t even see there was a cliff. I was running, bashing through bushes, and the next moment, the ground was gone from beneath my feet.”

  He watches me in silence for what feels like forever. A whining noise starts inside my head.

  Leaning forward, he says very quietly, “Why did Stella lure you, Deborah? What did you have to apologize for?”

  This is it. This the moment.

  “I witnessed the hit-and-run that killed her child.”

  He holds my gaze.

  “I never came forward,” I say softly. The whining noise grows louder in my head. “I was scared to talk to the police. I was a sex trade worker, and my pimp was putting me on street corners to sell sex. I was underage. He said if we—me or the other girls—ever, ever went to the cops, spoke to them about anything, he would kill us. We believed him. One of the girls had just been found dead when he said that. She’d spoken to the police about something.”

  “So you were the missing witness who saw the accident, who took her son’s backpack?”

  I say nothing. I am shaking so hard now.

  “Did you take the backpack, Deborah? The one Stella, or Estelle, told the police she’d seen a woman taking?”

  I nod.

  “Why?”

  “I needed money all the time. I thought there might be something valuable in it. Like an iPad.”

  “Was there?”

  It strikes me that maybe iPads were not around fourteen years ago. Terror licks through my gut. Careful. Careful.

  “No. Just a teddy bear and a storybook.”

  He hasn’t asked about the license plate, so I don’t mention it. Having taken the plate makes me seem even more evil, like I could really have come forward with something that would have solved the crime.

  “We’re going to need you to give statements about that day, Deborah. Are you okay with that? You’ll need to talk to the police in Vancouver.”

  “Will I be punished?”

  “The best you can do now, Deborah, is tell the whole truth. Things will go easier for you if you do.”

  I inhale shakily and rub my arm. He still doesn’t ask about the car license plate. So I’m guessing that the cop
s never did learn that it came off the BMW and was removed from the scene, so I remain mum.

  “What about Jackie Blunt, Dan Whitlock, Katie Colbourne, Bart Kundera—why did Stella lure them? Did she say?”

  “Yes. Dan Whitlock was the PI that Steven’s lawyer used to find me. Dan Whitlock, in turn, hired Jackie Blunt to pay me off and threaten me. Jackie Blunt made me leave town. Katie Colbourne was the one who covered the story, and who dug up Stella’s secret mental history. Stella blamed Katie for the fact she lost her husband, her job, and the fact the whole world turned against her and judged her as a bad mother and blamed her for ‘killing’ her own son.” I sit in silence for a moment. “She lost everything. Absolutely everything.”

  “Do you feel sorry for her?”

  Tears fill my eyes again. I nod.

  “Even though she tried to kill you.”

  “I . . . I don’t know what I would do if someone tried to hurt my baby, my child. If they blamed me . . .” I fall silent.

  “How did Stella find you all?”

  “I don’t know—only that she hired private investigators herself, who worked for years.”

  “Who paid those investigators?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t say. Please, Sergeant Deniaud, you don’t have to tell my fiancé that I worked in the sex trade, do you? Please. I . . . Our baby. We’re going to get married and have this baby, and I want to start fresh. I got away from that old life. I made good, Sergeant. I worked as hard as hell, and I had to work twice as hard as everyone else because of it. And I built my own company, and hired my own people, because . . .” I stop.

  Focus.

  “Please,” I say simply.

  He clicks the back of his pen again. Click click click click.

  “Is that why you changed your name?”

  Fear slams me. I try to swallow.

  “Yes.”

  “Katarina Vasiliev,” he says quietly.

  I go ice-cold inside. All the dark shit starts rising up like black ink poured into a vessel of water, into the vessel of my body, and it’s swirling up in leaky tendrils, filling me up all the way, spidering into my brain.

  “I wanted a fresh start,” I whisper.

  He turns the page of his notebook. He reads from a bulleted list. “You’re originally from Alberta. Three older brothers. Police records show your middle brother was found murdered along a rural trail not far from your family farm boundary. Homicide investigation was initiated, never closed.”

  I swallow and say nothing. My hatred for this man suddenly knows no bounds. The bitter taste in my mouth is foul.

  “Records also show that eight months prior to your brother’s murder, you had accused him of rape. You made a statement to the investigating officer that your own father plus another brother also sexually abused you. That it had started after your mother died, when you were fourteen.”

  I say nothing. The Monster in me is rising. Big and black. With fangs. It has fangs. Terrible fangs.

  “Your father and brothers raised you—”

  “They did not!” I slam my palm on the table. “I fucking raised myself!”

  He watches.

  Calm down. Fucking stupid bitch, calm the fuck down.

  “They abused you, Katarina. Didn’t they? At least two of your brothers, and your father. A quiet, nervous girl at school. No real friends, because you came from a weird family. They made fun of you at school.”

  My innards are shaking.

  “Sergeant Gord Fielding, the lead investigator on the Forest Lodge case, spoke to the retired detective who handled your brother’s homicide investigation all those years ago. He said it was a really sad case. It had bothered him for years. No one helped you. You lived on a remote farm with your dad and those three older brothers. Brutal cold winters. Isolated. Poor. Hand-to-mouth existence. Alcoholic father. Just you and those men. Your mother gone, no one to shield you.”

  I glower at him.

  Don’t talk. Don’t talk. Say nothing.

  He checks his notes. “Boris Vasiliev. That was your brother’s name. Twenty-three years old when he was found with a hatchet sunk into the back of his neck, right where his neck joins his skull. Found along a trail ten days after he didn’t come home one night.” He pauses. “It was never solved, was it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who might have done it?”

  “He had a lot of enemies.”

  “You didn’t like him.”

  “He raped me.”

  He nods pensively. “You were a pretty ace hatchet thrower, I hear. That’s kind of like throwing a meat cleaver?”

  My mouth goes dry.

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “You could hunt like a pro, too. Shoot. Field-dress game. Knew your guns. You were the one who was made to slaughter the farm pigs.”

  He waits.

  Calm. Calm. Stay calm. You are Deborah. You have a right to a good life. You had a right to change your name. You do not have to be defined by your past anymore.

  “Sergeant, I had a hard, hard childhood. Yes. I did what I had to in order to survive.”

  “That’s what the retired officer said. You left home after the murder. At age fifteen.”

  “I went to Vancouver. I was almost immediately befriended by a guy I thought was good. He gave me a place to stay, food, he said he loved me. He said he’d help me, and he brought me to a pimp. They knocked me about and sexually abused me, and kept me confined in a room for days. During that time I was hooked onto drugs. And I got hooked bad. I needed fixes all the time. I got into a bad life. But I changed my name, legally. I’ve made good. I . . . I have a right to be forgiven for selling my body like that. I built a business. I found a man. A good, good man. Please . . . please don’t tell him.”

  He weighs me, watching my eyes.

  “I was threatened,” I say again quietly. I’m sinking, spiraling. “They said they would kill me—that’s the reason I never came forward about the little boy who was killed. Stella’s little boy.”

  His jaw tightens, and I see a muscle at the side of his eye begin to twitch. He closes his notebook. And I wonder suddenly if he had a little boy, too.

  “Do you have to tell him?” I ask.

  “I’ll leave that to you, Deborah.” He pushes back his chair and comes to his feet.

  “Can I go?”

  “For now. We might have some more questions before you leave town.”

  I stand fast. My jacket is still on. I plunge my hands into my pockets and feel the sugar packets and toast crust there.

  “Like what other questions?”

  He opens the door and holds it wide for me to exit.

  “Maybe something will come up after we’ve spoken to Stella Daguerre.”

  Shock whams me. “Stella?”

  He nods, still holding the door open, waiting for me to exit.

  I can’t move. “Did you find her? Is . . . is she alive?”

  “Yes. She was brought in yesterday. A hunter called in that he’d found her in a makeshift shelter he uses. Not far from the bottom of the rapids where you say she fell into the river. She appears to have made it out of the water. She made it there, to the shelter.”

  “Where is she? Can she talk? How . . . how is she?”

  “Being stabilized and awaiting transport to a bigger medical facility. We’re hoping she pulls through.”

  Hubb is still standing there in the corridor outside the door. She regards me with a strange intensity, then glances at Sergeant Deniaud. Something passes between them. I swallow, unnerved. They’re up to something.

  Hubb says, “I’ll walk you back to the motel.”

  “No,” I say. “I . . . I need to be alone.”

  I hurry out of the room and make for the building exit. The words of the horrible rhyme dog me with rabid breath.

  Two Little Liars went on the run.

  One shot a gun, and then there was one.

  One Little Liar thinks he has won.

&
nbsp; For in the end, there can only be one.

  But maybe . . .

  there shall be none.

  NOW

  DEBORAH

  Sunday, November 8.

  With my hands sunk deep into my pockets, I walk back along the windblown street in this desolate town.

  Where sheer exhilaration fueled my steps earlier this morning, where my heart was full of the thrill of being alive, of having food, shelter, health, the knowledge that our baby was still growing safely in my belly, I am now fearful. Chilled to my core.

  My thoughts turn to Ewan.

  They’ve brought him back from his tour on compassionate grounds. He’s due to land in Kluhane Bay this evening.

  I pass a little bakery. The creaky sign swings in the wind. I go by the gas station, which has a coffee shop. If I had to imagine small-town Alaska, I would picture this place, but with corporate America logos and signs. I see the fire station. The bay door is open, and two men are washing the engine. Water runs down the paving, freezing into a solid sheen.

  I round the corner. The wind hits harder off the lake. I stop and dig my hands yet deeper in my pockets. I put my face up into the teeth of the raw wind, as if it might somehow scrub the horribleness away. Maybe I can’t scrub it. Maybe my past will always, always hound me. Maybe Ewan will be so disgusted . . . but I can still swing it. I believe I can swing it—my fresh start. I reckon they haven’t found out about my prison term, the conviction. Surely Sergeant Deniaud would have mentioned it if they had? Especially given that the cops know about Katarina. The rape accusations. My brother’s homicide.

  My pardon application was approved almost three months ago. Which means my criminal record should be well sealed by now, and unless I’m arrested and charged with a new crime, and fingerprinted again, my criminal record will not be found in the Canadian Criminal Real Time Identification Services database, CCRTIS. I have researched this. I know this. I’ve been working on getting things right for so long now . . .

  I see it as I round the next corner. The red emergency sign. The health care center where I was taken and treated after that SAR woman helped get me off the cliff. I stop and stare. It’s a clapboard building, not unlike the Kluhane RCMP station. Just bigger. It has stairs and a wooden accessibility ramp leading up to the glass doors. I see the windows where the hospital ward is—the beds where they kept me.