In the Barren Ground Read online

  She reseated herself at her desk and retied her hair. It was just after 9:00 a.m. She’d released Jamie, and Rosalie would be arriving soon. Police station office hours were 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. While she waited for Rosalie she’d transcribe her recording from the mauling, and get busy on that report. When Rosalie arrived, she could leave the station and go interview those K9 biologists before they left town. After that, she’d follow up with Viktor at the Red Moose, and speak to Caleb Peters about the fight. And bones.

  Tana took a sip of her tea, put on headphones, connected her digital recorder, and began typing up a transcript of the recorded observations she’d made at the scene.

  As she typed her own words, the images of the massacre shimmered up to the surface of her mind. She felt the horror rise again inside her belly as she was taken back to the scene …

  … the back of the head has been partially scalped, and there is a significant concave depression at the base of the skull. The long hair is matted with blood and clumped with what appears to be viscera. The color of the hair is strawberry blonde, very curly. Down the side of the face are four deep symmetric gouges, or rips …

  She heard emotion in her voice, a thickness she hadn’t quite realized had been there. She heard the rapidity of her own shallow breathing in her words. She could see it all again. Smell the coppery, meaty scent. Feel the cold. The light seemed to dim. Tana glanced up sharply, almost expecting to see a presence, a figure darkening the doorway.

  But it was the fire in the stove. She’d neglected to refuel it, allowing it to burn too low, and it was dying, taking the warm glow in the room with it. She cursed softly and got up to add wood. The town relied in large part on electrical heat generated by the diesel plant for warmth, but most supplemented this with wood fires. And the electrical heating in this building was faulty. Yet another thing to address.

  Van Bleek’s words circled her mind as she stoked the flames back to life.

  I take it that you’ve seen enough animal kills over your lifespan, at least—what’s your read here. Something a bit … off about this one?

  Her thoughts turned to Jamie TwoDove.

  Wasn’t the wolves that killed her … the soul eaters … they scrape the soul—your heart—right out of your chest. Take your eyes so you can’t see in the afterlife.

  Tana shut and secured the stove door. Toyon rolled onto his back in front of the stove with a sigh, exposing his belly to the warmth. She absently scratched his tummy, her mind turning to Big Indian.

  See, now, that is where Elliot went truly mad. He believed someone had killed his kid …

  Returning to her desk, Tana resumed transcribing. She reached the part where she’d noted the symmetrical gouges down the side of Selena Apodaca’s ravaged face. She hit pause, and pulled up the corresponding thumbnails of the images she’d downloaded last night, enlarged them. Backlit on her monitor they came to brutal life—the torn-off soft tissue, the raked-out eyes. Nose in ribbons, exposing nasal cavity and cartilage. A bear had more than four claws.

  Perhaps not all of the claws would catch skin in a swipe?

  Tana worried her bottom lip with her teeth as she regarded the images. Quickly, she scrolled through the rest of the photos and enlarged the ones that showed the four distinct parallel rips on both Apodaca’s and Sanjit’s bodies. The same slashes appeared on the Jerry cans.

  This is something Charlie Nakehk’o could help with, far more than any so-called large-carnivore experts the coroner’s office might consult. Many of those experts were sent reports and photographs and examined things from afar. Charlie was on-site. One of the most experienced trackers around. And he knew local fauna and flora specifically. He’d be able to tell her whether this was a normal predation pattern for wolves, too. And he might know something about those past attacks.

  She hit Print, and the office printer kicked into noisy life as it began pushing out images of the slashes, the bodies, the paw prints. As Tana gathered the printouts, something caught her eye in one of the photos that she hadn’t noticed before. A left boot print with what appeared to be a jagged mark through the lugs. Frowning at the image, she went back to her monitor and pulled up her series of boot prints. While the coroner had been conducting her own investigation, Tana had matched Apodaca’s and Sanjit’s boot soles to various sets of prints, and recorded them. Apodaca had been wearing a size six Tundra-XC boot. Sanjit, size nine Exterras.

  Both Van Bleek and Kino wore WestMin-issue Baffin Arctics. Van Bleek was a size twelve, Kino a ten. This print with the slash through the lug bore the same distinctive tread pattern as a Baffin Arctic. It looked to be a size ten, too. Or maybe a nine. But neither Van Bleek’s nor Kino’s left boot sole bore that jagged slash. It was as if the wearer of the boot had slipped on something sharp, cutting the sole. Tana tapped her pen on the desk, thinking.

  The print was atop snow, and had been protected from further snowfall in the deep lee of a rock, so the markings were quite clear. Because it was on top of snow it had obviously been made after the weather had blown in on Friday. It could conceivably have been made before Apodaca and Sanjit had arrived. Or, it could have come after. Who else had been there? Or was this lug mark an anomaly—something stuck temporarily under the sole of either Van Bleek’s or Kino’s boots that had caused the odd-looking slash in the tread pattern? Tana was also well aware of the vagaries of weather, and how melt-freeze temps, or hoarfrost, or wind could mess with tracks, giving weird results.

  She scrolled carefully through all the other images of boot prints. Her heart kicked. There was another. Left Baffin Arctic. Same jagged slash. Although this one was less clear.

  I saw you out there on Friday, Crash. Saw your bird parked just on the other side of the cliff from where those kids were working. Round lunchtime when I was flying another crew …

  Tana printed the second image of the boot print with the slashed lug, as well as some images of the bones. Once the body retrieval guys had lifted Apodaca’s torso, she’d found more bones down between a little rocky crevice over which Apodaca had been lying.

  Again, her thoughts turned to Big Indian’s words.

  It’s like with those other two girls who were killed. Bad shit, that. Happening all over again …

  She shut down her files, opened the local RCMP database, and began searching for the reports that would have been filed on the Regan Novak and Dakota Smithers attacks three and four years ago.

  She found nothing, not only on those cases, but no reports at all had been electronically entered pre-two-and-a-half years ago. What the? Had this station not been computerized, or what? Perhaps they were all on paper.

  Tana got the keys out of her desk drawer, and pushed back her chair. She went down the hall, unlocked the small filing room beside the weapons locker room. She clicked on the light, entered. Banker’s boxes of files lined shelves. Tana scanned the dates on the labels, finding the boxes for November, three and four years ago—the months Big Indian had told her the two previous maulings had occurred.

  She hauled these boxes out, cleared off the second desk in the office, and began pulling out folders, searching for the reports.

  Her body grew hot as she rummaged through the entire lot, finding nothing, then starting again in case the reports had gotten stuck between others. In frustration she pushed her flyaway hair back off her face. Perhaps they’d been misfiled. She returned to the file room, got more boxes, and began flipping through the contents.

  The station door opened with a sudden blast of cold air, ruffling papers off the desk.

  She glanced up.

  “Tana—what are you doing?” Rosalie said in the very slow, singsong cadence that was indigenous to the region. She shut the heavy wood door behind her. “The place is a mess.”

  “You’re late,” Tana said, flipping open another file. Her dogs got up to greet the admin clerk.

  Rosalie set her purse on her desk—a big fake leather affair with a gold chain for a strap and feathers affixed to the s
ides. “Diana’s baby girl had colic last night. Diana was tired. She needed sleep.” Rosalie peeled out of her down coat, and hung it up. “I had to feed the other kids breakfast, and get them off to school.”

  Tana looked up. “Diana?”

  “My niece.”

  As if it was the most normal thing in the world for your niece and her kids to take precedence over work. Tana was about to say something, when Addy’s words bounced back to haunt her.

  It’s not easy on a woman—anyone—at the best of times. I know what I’m talking about. My mom was a cop … be there for your baby, Tana …

  She stilled, staring at Rosalie, and it struck her. How in the hell was she going to manage?

  “What are you looking for?” Rosalie said, slowly unwinding the scarf bound around her neck. “You look like you seen a ghost, or something.” She paused. “You okay?”

  “Reports from three and four years ago. November—where would I find them?”

  “The dates are on the boxes.”

  “Yeah, I can see that, but the paperwork for the two cases that I’m searching for is not in here. This place is a mess of disorganization, what in the hell? Those cases must have associated paperwork—there’s nothing at all digital from prior to thirty months ago.”

  “You feeling okay, Tana?”

  “Christ, Rosalie, I’m fine. Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

  “Well, you’ve been out there with those man-eating wolves,” Rosalie said as she palmed off her hat, and seated herself to remove her fur boots. “No sleep. And there was the fight at the Red Moose. Heard about that from Clive, Diana’s boyfriend. He’s a nice guy. I hope Diana keeps him.” She stood, smoothed down her shirt, then her pants, pulled the chair out from her desk. “Just a normal question, you know. After good morning, people say, how are you. Jamie still in lockup?”

  Tana stared, files still clutched tightly in her hands. It was this town. This weird Twin-fucking-Peaks town, and this case—it was off.

  “Maybe I can make you some tea, Tana. You look all tight. Look at your hands.”

  She glanced down, swallowed, and released her death grip on the files. She laid them on the desk, took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. You’re right—long nights. Jamie’s gone. I released him with a warning and a promise to work off the damages at the Red Moose if Viktor agrees.”

  “Oh, he will. He’ll agree.”

  “So,” Tana began more slowly, “I’m looking for two reports that I can’t find. One from November three years ago, and one from November four years ago. And there’s nothing digital that has been filed from that period.”

  “We had a big system crash about two and a half years back. Before the new dish and the new satcom system. Ate all the electronic files. And then we got the new computers. But we have the paper backups. Which cases are you looking for?”

  “The mauling deaths of Regan Novak and Dakota Smithers.”

  A stillness befell Rosalie.

  “What?” Tana said.

  “Why do you want those?”

  “What is it with everyone? I just want to see them. We’ve had a terrible wolf attack in this jurisdiction, and—”

  “Those wolves were shot dead long ago. They had nothing to do with this new attack.”

  “Rosalie,” she said quietly, “do you know where those missing files are? Why are they the only ones missing?”

  She angled her head, a furrow eating across her brow. “It made him mad, you know? Elliot Novak. Stark raving lunatic mad. Wasn’t good to keep looking like that, searching to blame some person, some evil, when there was none. Nothing but the way of the wild.”

  “The files, Rosalie?”

  She heaved out a sigh and shook her head. “Come. I’ll show you.” She unhooked a key from the rack that hung near her desk. “They’re down in the crawl space—he didn’t want those two with the others.”

  “Who’s ‘he’?” Tana said, following Rosalie.

  “The station commander who replaced Sergeant Novak, Corporal Barry Buccholz.”

  “Just those two reports? Why?”

  Rosalie bent down to unlock the small crawl space door near the gun room. She creaked it open. A rickety set of wooden stairs led into a black hole. “Down there,” she said. “In back. Light doesn’t work—it needs a new bulb.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Tana said, taking her flashlight from her belt. She bent double, panned her beam in. Cold breathed out from the underground space. It wasn’t properly insulated down there. She coughed as she caught the scent of mold, dank soil, at the back of her throat. This would explain the constant cold in the building. It was creeping out from here.

  “I don’t see any file boxes.”

  “Near the back,” said Rosalie.

  Tana had to crouch down to half her height to enter. She peered deeper into the bowels with her flashlight, saw a shelf, and on it, a banker’s box. Cobwebs wafted as she moved into the crawl space, and a broken strand floated out, curling around her wrist, as if pulling her in, gently, insistently.

  “What on earth did Buccholz put them all the way back there for?”

  Silence.

  She looked over her shoulder, bumped her head, cursed, then bit the bullet and crept in a low crouch to the rear of the crawl space to retrieve the box. As she poked her head back out, the look on Rosalie’s face chilled her. She scowled at her assistant, and lugged the box into the warm office. Rosalie locked the tiny door behind her.

  Tana set the box on the desk, removed the lid. As Rosalie entered, Tana said, “Why, Rosalie, why did Buccholz stick these papers down there?”

  “He was worried Elliot Novak would try and break in again, and get them.”

  She glanced up. “What?”

  “Sergeant Elliot Novak broke into the station just over two years ago. He came out of the bush, broke the window, got the keys out of Buccholz’s desk, and was going through the files in the storeroom when Buccholz found him.”

  Tana’s jaw dropped. “What was Novak looking for?”

  “I don’t know. He’s mad, Tana. He was just babbling and raving, and … he’s not sane. He’s dangerous.”

  “So Buccholz hid the reports?”

  “Yup.”

  Jesus.

  She dusted off the first file, coughed.

  “Be careful, Tana.” Rosalie said, her voice low, different. “Those cases messed up a lot of lives.”

  As Crash brought his Beaver in to land at the Twin Rivers strip after his early morning run to the lodge, he saw Heather pacing outside the hangar, smoking. Her long blonde hair blew loose in the mounting wind. Impatient and continually moving as usual—he didn’t think he’d ever seen Heather truly still. Beautiful, too. The kind of strong-willed, capable, commitment-averse woman he tended to like, and bed. He grinned. It had been a while since he’d slept with her. He could handle some nookie. Get his mind off Tana Larsson, and whatever else was messing with his head when it came to that cop. He touched his Beaver down, bounced, then bumped and rattled down the runway. He slowed, taxied toward Heather, bringing his props almost up to her. She didn’t move, nor flinch. Just stood there grinning, cigarette in her fingers at her side, hair flying back from her face as he came to a halt.

  Game of chicken.

  The blades slowed and stopped just sort of slicing her open. Crash chuckled, threw her a salute.

  She came around to his side as he removed his headset. He opened his door, hopped down. Behind her, the windsock atop the hangar quavered at an erect ninety degrees—wind coming directly from the north, those big storm fronts announcing their imminent arrival.

  “And to what do I owe this pleasure?” he said, removing his World War II goggles.

  “You got any?”

  He caught sight of Mindy watching from the kitchen window of his house next to the strip. He waved. Mindy did not respond, just kept staring, and an odd feeling trickled through him.

  “Let’s go into the hangar,” he said to Heather,
his eyes still on Mindy. Selling dope was one thing. Having the kid watch him do so was another.

  Heather dropped her cigarette butt to the ice, ground it out with her foot, and followed him into the hangar and out of the wind.

  Crash opened the lapel of his jacket, removing a smaller version of the baggie he’d delivered to Alan Sturmann-Taylor yesterday.

  “Same price as last time,” he said. “And it’s going to go up if that cop starts on my case.”

  Heather took the bag of BC bud from him and handed him cash.

  He counted it.

  “Was it because of her listening—that cop—that you denied your AeroStar was parked out there, behind that ridge on Friday afternoon?” she said as she opened the baggie and sniffed for good measure.

  He looked into her blue eyes. “I didn’t lie.”

  Her gaze locked with his in silence for several beats, mistrust narrowing her pupils.

  “Seriously?” she said. “You want Larsson to believe that there’s, like, what … several little red AeroStars buzzing about near the WestMin camp? Because I know there’s sure as hell not, and she doesn’t strike me as stupid.”

  “Where, exactly, did you see this bird?”

  “Right on the other side of the cliff where that team was attacked.”

  “That team had names, Heather. Selena and Raj. We’ve both had drinks with them at the Red Moose.”

  She fell silent, stuffed her baggie in her pocket, looked away. Wind gusted a flurry of crystals into the doorway of the hangar. “I know,” she said finally, quietly. “It’s just …”

  “That naming them, personalizing them, makes it harder.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Brings back memories—military shit?”

  She nodded.

  “Still the military gal, just trying to block it all out.” He punched her lightly on the arm.