A Darkness Absolute

by Kelley Armstrong

  "I am with Eric because I want to be with Eric. Suggesting anything else is insulting, Val. Very insulting."

  She stops, teacup clutched between her hands. "I don't mean to be," she says. "I worry. You seem so bright and accomplished, and yet you choose to be with that ... that--"

  "I am well aware of your opinion of Eric, Val. I would like to keep that out of the current discussion, unless it has some bearing on it."

  Her hands tighten on the mug, and she goes quiet. Very quiet.

  "Val? Does it have some bearing?"

  Her finger trembles as she puts the mug down. "Of course not."

  "If you have a specific complaint against Eric--"

  "I don't."

  I eye her. There's more here. Not anything Eric's done--I know him better than that. But there is something connected to her attack and to him.

  "Sheriff Dalton did nothing," she says firmly.

  "Is that the problem? That he didn't take your attack seriously? You never told him you'd been attacked."

  "It did not bear mentioning. He organized and participated in the search. His diligence was unquestionable, as always."

  Do I detect a twist of sarcasm?

  She continues, "You wish to hear the whole story. It was a routine patrol. It lasted longer than I expected, and I ... needed to slip away. I'd drunk more water than I intended."

  "So you told the guys that you had to go to the bathroom."

  "That wasn't necessary. They'd stopped to examine a campsite, and I said I wanted to see animal tracks we'd passed on the trail. One of the men offered to walk with me. I demurred. I retreated on the path and then slipped off it. I went farther than I intended in my quest for privacy. After I finished, I started back, heard the men calling, and realized I'd gone in the wrong direction. That's when I was grabbed."

  From there, her story progresses as I'd heard it before. She was taken captive by two men, who threatened her and then decided it was time for a nap--because threats are just so exhausting. She escaped while they were asleep.

  I ask her to physically describe the men. One could be Nicole's captor, but that would be more heartening if it was a more unusual description. I home in on their appearances otherwise, in hopes of expanding my understanding of hostiles. How did they look? What did they wear? How did they speak?

  The first time she told this story, she sniffed about the men communicating in poor English, barely understandable. When I probe, though, it's clear that Val's idea of "poor English" isn't exactly the same as mine. It turns out the hostiles weren't the grunting Neanderthals she first described. They sounded like guys I'd expect to meet in these woods--men who might have been mining or hunting all season and not exactly bathing regularly.

  Except they aren't. There's little doubt of that. They were aggressive in a way that goes well beyond a couple of rough miners who find a woman in the woods and act out their dark fantasies. These men had stylized scar patterns. Deliberately blackened teeth. Braided hair and beards. They'd been dressed in cured animal hides, roughly sewn and decorated with bones. They seem like guys who recalled seeing old National Geographic magazines and emulated a hodgepodge of tribal customs.

  When they spoke, it was understandable enough, but with words that Val couldn't understand, like you might expect from people who spoke only to one another, inventing their own dialect. The gist of their message had been clear, though. You are on our territory. We are going to show you why that is a very bad idea.

  "And then they fell asleep?" I say.

  She could come up with some explanation for this, however implausible. Instead she just looks me in the eye and says, "Yes."

  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

  I don't need details of what happened between the threats and the escape, just like I didn't need details of what happened to Nicole in that cave. Details do not impact my case.

  "You know what happened to Nicole," I say. "You know that man didn't just hold her captive for conversation."

  "I don't need to hear--"

  "And I'm not going to tell you, because that's none of your business. I'm saying that you know what happened, correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Given the short time you spent with these two men, would you believe them capable of doing that to Nicole?"

  "Yes."

  "Mentally capable of holding her in a cave and remembering to provide rudimentary care?"

  "Yes."

  "Earlier, your opinion of their intelligence--"

  "I would not attempt to discuss the fundamental theorem of algebra with them, but I have no doubt they could have done this."

  We talk for a few more minutes. I thank her, and I'm leaving, and as I reach the door, she says, "Do you believe it could have been the same men?"

  I open my mouth, and she says, "Yes, I know, Nicole was taken by one person, but there is no reason two couldn't have been involved, one as an accomplice."

  "That's a possibility. Either way, it wouldn't rule out one of your attackers being her captor--and the man who killed Victoria and Robyn."

  "That's what I avoided, then," she says, her voice dropping. "If I hadn't escaped..."

  "You avoided something," I say. "You got away. Which does not mean that Nicole failed to escape."

  "Yes, I know."

  "Well, with the way you talk sometimes, I thought I'd better make that clear."

  She flushes. "I don't mean--"

  "I'm not interested in hashing it out tonight, Val. Nicole never saw her attacker. He knocked her out from behind, and she woke in that hole. She didn't have the chance to escape."

  "Possibly because I had. They learned." She wraps her arms around herself. "I keep thinking of that. Dreaming of it. Waking up in a hole and--" Her breathing accelerated, and she steps back quickly. "I'm sorry, Detective. I'm overtired."

  "Would you like me to post a guard?"

  "No, of course not. I'm fine."

  "I will ask the militia to do extra passes by your house. If there's any chance this is the same guy, he targeted you once. If you want a night guard, just ask me. They don't need to know anything other than that there's a suggestion you could be a target. The only catch is that he'd have to stay in your living room--we can't ask him to stand on your porch all night in this weather."

  She says, "Extra passes will be fine." Then she looks at me. "Thank you."

  I nod and leave.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Before we retire for the evening, Dalton takes Storm for a run through town. And I do mean a run, to the point where he's carrying her back and she's not the only one panting. I may have mentioned earlier that, as much as I love my puppy, I'm loving her a little less at bedtime. Hence the run, and then she's sound asleep in her bed upstairs and Dalton finds his second wind very nicely. Soon we're both panting, stretched out on the bearskin, legs still entwined.

  "Thank you," I say when we're done.

  "I was going to suggest we work from home for a while earlier today, but I know you've been busy."

  "I'm never that busy."

  "Good to know." He kisses me, and then we snuggle down on the rug, and a few minutes later, as I'm staring into the fire, he says, "Working?"

  "Yes, sorry." I pull my gaze away from the flames.

  "I'm asking, not complaining."

  His fingers tickle down my bare side. He just traces right over my scars. I'm sure other lovers thought they were being considerate by avoiding them, but to me it always felt like they were avoiding the ugliness, trying to see past it. Dalton doesn't even seem to notice them, and I'm so busy enjoying his touch that it takes a moment to see that look in his eyes, the one that means he has something to say.

  "Hmm?" I say.

  "Anything you want to talk about? With the case? You're working through something. I can see that, and I know you were busy tonight, talking to Mathias and Val, and..."

  And you haven't told me what it is. You always tell me what it is.

  "If you want to talk, I'm her
e," he says. "Well, obviously. I'm always here." He exhales. "Fuck."

  "I love it when you flounder," I say. "It's adorable."

  He makes a face. I reach up to push his hair back. It's just long enough to show a cowlick in the front, which is also adorable, but I refrain from saying so.

  "I'm not talking about what I'm investigating because I'm still working it through," I say. "And, admittedly, also because it's a subject you don't seem keen to talk about, so I want to work it through first. Get it straight in my head, before I bring it to you."

  He frowns. "What is it?"

  "Hostiles. I know, you don't think the perpetrator could be one of them."

  The frown grows. "When did I say that?"

  "I got the message when I brought them up and you wanted to move on."

  He props onto one arm. "That seemed like I was dismissing the idea? Hell, no. I just didn't know what else to say. It's the same as when we considered the hostiles for Powys's death. It doesn't get us anywhere. With residents and settlers, we can consider individuals, interview them, question others about them. With hostiles, it's like saying we think a bear did it. Only way we can stop it is to stop it. Trap it. Kill it."

  "Is that what the hostiles are to you?"

  He rubs his cheek, fingers skritching against his beard. "You mean would I kill one if I found out he did something like this? Not unless I had to. Bad analogy, then. I'd trap and relocate. Same as I'd prefer to do with an animal. If I seemed to be avoiding the possibility, it's because this case is a helluva lot easier if we're dealing with a settler."

  "Jacob says it can't be a hostile."

  "Can't?"

  "He was adamant about that. A hostile doesn't have the mental capacity to pull this off."

  That frown again. "I don't know why he'd say that. Sure, I don't have as much experience with them, but of course some could do this. Jacob knows that."

  "I think it's because of what Beth did to him. He's equating that with hostiles. He looks back and thinks he couldn't have held Nicole captive for a year when he was in that mental state, so therefore hostiles couldn't either."

  "I guess so."

  Dalton goes pensive, and I can tell he doesn't like that explanation. After a moment, he says, "Yeah, there are hostiles who could do it. I remember this one time, maybe twelve years back, we had a group that left town. Four people. The sheriff ... my, uh, father..."

  Dalton doesn't talk about the former sheriff much, and when he does, there's a discomfort with the language. Sheriff, father, adopted father ... kidnapper. What exactly is Gene Dalton to him? I don't think Dalton knows himself. I don't blame him.

  "My father," he says, firmer. "He used to be less understanding of runners than the sheriff before him."

  "Ty Cypher?"

  "Right. Cypher didn't give a damn if people left, and my father thought that was just Cypher being an asshole, but I think it was more..." He shrugs. "If you want to go, go. Cypher saw it as a valid alternative. I disagree, but only because people don't know what they're getting into. It's not Little House on the Fucking Prairie."

  "First, there's no prairie."

  "Exactly."

  "Second, you've read Little House on the Prairie?"

  His eyes narrow in a mock glare. "You got a problem with that?"

  "Not at all, Sheriff. Continue, please."

  "People have idealized views of the wilderness. That it's some kind of natural paradise. If they want to become settlers, I try to disabuse them of that notion. But if they insist? It's not as bad as my father..." He clears his throat. Shifts. "It's not what he thought."

  Because Gene Dalton really had seen all outsiders as savages. He'd "rescued" Dalton from his birth parents, which is like "rescuing" a kid from a family voluntarily living off the grid.

  "Anyway," Dalton says, "these four snuck off, and the hostiles got them."

  "Killed them?"

  "Took them. I found their camp. It was a week later, and it'd been long abandoned, but there was stuff there, from their packs. Personal stuff. Photos and mementos they'd brought from down south."

  "Things no one else would have wanted. And things they wouldn't have left behind."

  He nods. "I found evidence of a struggle, too. Marks in the dirt. Blood. I followed the trail for a while; at some point, though, their captors realized they were leaving a trail and took steps to cover it. I lost it in a stream."

  "They deliberately covered their tracks. Which suggests a reasonable degree of intelligence. Are you sure it was hostiles?"

  "Yeah." He goes quiet for a moment. "I saw one of the captives. The woman. It was a year later. She ... she'd become one of them. A hostile. She still wore some of the clothing she took, but it wasn't more than rags. Her hair had been hacked off. One of her ears had blackened from frostbite. A couple of her fingers, too. It was ... hard to take. I knew her. She'd been a biologist down south, and we used to talk about that. Just talk. She was nice. Smart and kind and nice. And when I met her in the forest? She attacked me. Hitting, biting, clawing. I thought I was going to have to shoot her. Later, I wondered if maybe I should have, if that wouldn't have been--" He squeezes his eyes shut. "Fuck, I don't mean that. I don't. That's not my decision to make. But seeing her like that, it was hard. What she'd been. What she'd become."

  I entwine my fingers with his, move against him, and stay close, listening to him breathe.

  "How did she get that way?" I ask gently.

  He looks at me.

  "This is the question I'm trying to work out," I say. "How do hostiles become hostile? Was she tormented and abused until she just lost her mind? Can that happen in a year? Someone like Nicole pulls through--mentally intact--and someone else doesn't? And if so, then what about the others? The ones who captured her? How did they get that way?"

  I tell him about my talk with Mathias. When I finish, he's quiet. Then he says, "I never thought of it. Hostiles just ... they are, you know. For me, there have always been hostiles in the woods. My parents--my birth parents--warned me about them from the time I was able to wander. Asking how they got that way would have been like asking why bears or cougars would attack if I got too close."

  "Just another kind of animal."

  "Yeah. Which they aren't, and they weren't born that way, so..." He turns onto his back. "I'm going to need to think about this."

  *

  It's the middle of the night when we wake to Kenny banging on Dalton's door. Sutherland is conscious. Kenny takes the puppy to Petra's while Dalton and I yank on clothes and hurry out.

  Sutherland is still groggy and feverish. Interviewing him in that state feels almost as cruel as interviewing Nicole, but it must be done. We manage to keep him awake long enough to get a semicoherent account.

  After he ran from Rockton--"I can't believe I was that stupid"--he'd heard us coming after him on the sleds and veered into the forest--"I wanted to get back to town on my own, figured I'd get in less trouble." He'd been making his way in the direction of Rockton when someone hit him in the back of the head--"I never heard a thing. Just felt it and then everything went black."

  Sutherland woke in a makeshift shelter that offered no more than basic protection from the elements. He drifted in and out of consciousness--"I don't know how long. It was so cold, and my head hurt, and all I wanted to do was sleep." Finally, he woke to realize he was bound and gagged.

  His captor watched him. Like with Nicole. Only in Sutherland's case, that's all he did. He watched and then he left, saying nothing, not feeding his captive or giving him anything to drink.

  Sutherland found a slab of broken wood on that makeshift shelter and used the sharp edge to slowly hack through the rope on his wrist, which explained the splinters. He escaped and oriented himself by the mountains. Eventually, he stumbled onto one of the paths, followed it, and began to recognize landmarks. That's when his captor found him again. Sutherland fled into the woods, hoping to lose him. He ran until he passed out, not realizing how close he was to town. />
  I ask if he knows where he was kept, if he could get me back to the spot. It might provide some clues. But while he says he'll try, his tone tells me he has no idea where to go. He'd escaped and run blindly through the woods.

  "The guy who captured you," Dalton says. "Can you describe him?"

  Sutherland nods. "A little taller than me. Dark hair. Dark beard. I--I'm not sure of his eyes. Dark, I think. He'd wear one of those hats that goes right over your head, with the eye and mouth openings."

  "A balaclava," I say.

  "Right. One time, when he thought I was sleeping, he raised it to drink, and I saw a beard. Oh, and he wore winter coveralls. What's the word? The things you guys wear on the sleds?"

  "A snowmobile suit?" I ask.

  "Yes. He wore a snowmobile suit."

  THIRTY-SIX

  The next morning, Dalton and I are out at dawn, hiking to see Silas Cox, the guy who'd given Jacob the creeps with his bondage fantasies. Jacob said Cox is one of the more settled guys out here, meaning he has a permanent residence and tends to stick to it. That residence is about ten kilometers from Rockton, which we need to do on foot--it's too far off-trail to take the horses or snowmobiles. It doesn't take long for me to realize I really need to get working on my snowshoe skills. Or convince Dalton we need cross-country skis. The forest here is dense enough that it's not like we're trudging through three feet of snow, but it's still slow going.

  As we walk, I tell Dalton about my meeting with Val.

  "Yeah, I imagine she'd be having a rough time of it," he says. "I hadn't given that much thought. Whether or not one of her attackers is the same guy, she'll be wondering how close she came to ending up like Nicole--or Robyn and Victoria. Maybe see if she has a weapon. I'm not giving her a gun, but a baseball bat might make her feel safer."

  "There's something else," I say. "We had some weird back-and-forth in regards to your role in her disappearance."

  His brows shoot up. "My role? I told her not to go on patrol. Hell, I forbade it. Council overrode me."