In the Barren Ground Read online

  Her mouth flattened. Something in her eyes told him that he’d pushed over the line this time, and she didn’t like it.

  “Hey,” he said, in an effort to lighten her up, “I’m done with my morning run. I’ve got some hours to spare. I’ll take a look at that sprag clutch if you want.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Tana pulled up outside the Broken Pine Motel on her ATV. The K9 team would be flying out of town in just over an hour. She needed to interview them before they left—the Regan and Dakota files would have to wait. She turned her machine off, and removed her helmet. Her dogs ran into the trees to investigate while she approached the small motel office.

  The Broken Pine was a standard strip of clapboard rooms, one story, doors opening out onto a raised, covered porch that ran along the front. Everything was raised here to accommodate the winter snowpack. A jagged pine speared into the sky beside the building—a landmark and the motel’s namesake, she presumed. Viktor Baroshkov not only owned the Red Moose, the motel was his, too. He also owned the General Store and Diner, although he played a backseat role there, letting Marcie run the place.

  She pushed open the office door. A bell jangled, and a balding man came out from the back.

  “Hey, Viktor.”

  “Constable,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you. Word is you want Jamie to work back damages.”

  She set her helmet down on the counter. “You good with that? You think you can come to some arrangement with him?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know, I—”

  “Viktor, he was hurting. I’ll get to the bottom of why he went for Caleb Peters, but my brief from headquarters in Yellowknife, and from the local band council, is that we need to work toward a system of restorative justice, wherever possible, especially with the local youth. Punish them, fine them, send them to prison, and we’re just going to be making criminals long-term. My sense—” She held up her hand as he opened his mouth to protest. “My sense is that Jamie is not a bad person. You let him help you at the Red Moose, and you get some free labor into the bargain, how about that?”

  He ran his hand over his pate.

  “We’ll need to bring everyone together,” she said. “You, Jamie, Caleb, the band council, whoever else was affected by the fight, have a bit of a powwow, and we can go from there, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. I can give it a shot, but I tell you—”

  “Are Dean Kaminsky and Veronique Garnier still here?” she said. “I need to see them.”

  “Checked out already, but still packing, I think. Rooms six and seven.”

  Tana thanked Viktor and made her way along the porch that fronted the motel rooms. She found number six, removed her gloves, knocked on the door. A dog barked inside and a female voice hushed it.

  The door opened a crack.

  “Veronique Garnier?” Tana said.

  A slight, dark-haired woman with red, puffy eyes nodded. Her complexion was pale and her hair damp, as if she’d just stepped out of the shower.

  Tana explained who she was, and why she was here. “Can I come in?”

  Veronique stepped back. Tana scuffed her boots and entered. An Australian shepherd lay on the bed, eyeing her warily. Tana got the sense if she made one wrong move, the animal would be on her.

  “Selena and I have been sharing this room since spring,” Veronique said. “Dean—my teammate on the wolverine project—bunked next door with Raj.” She blew her nose on a soggy piece of tissue. “I can’t believe this happened. It was our last week. I …” Her voice caught. “We almost got out. Almost all got home … I … Christmas, New Year. She’ll never make it. I can’t believe they’re gone.”

  Tana scanned the interior. It was basic. Two cot beds. A desk under the window. Walls painted a dirty cream. Old-style light fixture. The window looked out onto a vacant lot that was covered at the moment with a thin layer of snow.

  “I’ve already checked out,” Veronique explained, ruffling the head of her dog. “Just finishing packing. There’s a North Air flight coming in shortly. I’ll be leaving on that one.”

  “I won’t keep you long,” Tana said. “I just need a few questions answered for a routine report. This was Selena’s bed?” Tana gestured to a neatly made cot with an open suitcase on top, clothes neatly folded inside.

  Veronique sagged down onto her bed suddenly, as if someone had taken her out at the back of the knees. She hunched forward and dragged her hands over her face. “I’m still trying to process it,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t sure what to do with Selena’s stuff, but I … I called her mother—I got the number from EnviroTech.” She glanced at Selena’s packed case. “She often spoke of her mother. They were close. Her mom’s also a biologist—teaches at the University of Alberta. She asked me to bring Selena’s things—everything. I’ll be flying to Edmonton, where Selena’s and Raj’s parents have gone to ID the bodies, where they’ll do the autopsies …”

  Tana winced inside. No parent should have to see their child torn apart, gutted, eaten like that.

  “You should see a critical incident stress counselor when you get back, will you do that?” Tana said. “I can get some names for you. What you saw, experienced, was traumatic.”

  “You saw it, too.”

  Tana nodded.

  Veronique fiddled with her nails. “So, how do you get used to stuff like that, as a cop?”

  “You don’t,” Tana said.

  “You just buck up and deal with it, then?”

  Tana thought of Jim. “Some try. But it comes out in ways in the end.” She cleared her throat. She missed him so much it hurt like a hole in her stomach.

  “Do you have any current photos of Selena and Raj?”

  “Yeah. On my phone.” Veronique reached over, opened a bag, took out her phone. As she searched through it for photos, the door opened and a guy entered. Average to short in height, powerful build. Pale, ash-blond hair and trimmed beard.

  “Everything okay?” His attention went to the phone in Veronique’s hand. He then looked at Tana.

  “Constable Larsson,” she said, holding his eyes, direct.

  “Dean Kaminsky.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  His mouth tightened, hands going into his pockets. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “I’ll need a statement from you, if that’s okay?”

  “Sure.” Dean made as if to sit on the bed beside Veronique.

  “I mean, after I’m done here with Veronique,” Tana said. “I’d like to talk to you separately.”

  “Why separate?”

  “It helps,” Tana said kindly. “Down the road, if there are questions about what actually happened.”

  “As in … if it wasn’t an accident?”

  “As in, how things might have played out, that’s all. The goal is for the coroner’s office to figure out how to mitigate the chances of something similar happening in the future.”

  “I don’t want to get anyone into trouble—this was no one’s fault,” Dean said. “We’ve worked with really good people out here. The other teams, supervisor, pilots—this was just a terrible accident.”

  “Those wolves were human habituated, Dean,” Veronique blurted out, her face tightening, her eyes lighting with sudden anger. “And you know it. You don’t have to apologize for anyone. Those guys at the WestMin camp were feeding those same animals that we saw along the beach. And Selena told us that she felt as though she was being followed, stalked out there, these last few weeks. You guys laughed her off, like you always did. We did nothing about it. But she and Raj—they were being stalked, hunted, and no, it’s not okay.” Her eyes glimmered.

  Dean glowered at her.

  “Which is why I need to chat with you individually,” said Tana quietly. “Separate opinions can be valuable.”

  “I’m next door,” Dean said curtly. He made for the door. “And knock when you come. I have a dog. He doesn’t like surprises.”

  He slammed the door in his wake.

  “He’s up
set,” Veronique said. “He … he had a thing for Selena, has had for the last two years, but it wasn’t mutual.”

  Tana seated herself on Selena’s bed, opposite Veronique. She took out her notebook, and flipped it open. “Why don’t you start with the morning you left Twin Rivers, Friday, November second.”

  Veronique closed her eyes, inhaled deeply. And she gave pretty much the same story MacAllistair had from the time they were picked up, the route they flew out, how they saw wolves along the lakeshore, how MacAllistair noted the bad weather coming in fast and asked Apodaca and Sanjit if they were prepped for an overnighter.

  “You saw nothing else on your flight in—no other sign of life? Just wolves?”

  “Well, caribou. And the men in the camp … oh, wait. Selena thought she saw a man wearing furs on the ridge above the wolves.”

  “Did she?”

  “I—we—no one else saw him. Raj figured it could have been a bear, or just a shadow from the chopper. The sun was at a very low angle, and blinding off the ice on the rock face.”

  “Can you recall what Selena said?”

  “Well, Raj pointed out that there were no vehicles in sight, so if it was a man that Selena had seen, he had no means of transport. Selena said he could have been dropped off by chopper, and expecting a pickup.”

  “So no one saw any other vehicles out there?”

  “No.”

  “No other planes, or a chopper? Over the ridge, anywhere?”

  “To tell you the truth, if there was a chopper on the other side of the ridge, I could have missed it. I was looking out the opposite window. I only saw to the southwest.”

  Tana scribbled a notation in the margin. O’Halloran. Ask re: AeroStar.

  “What happened on Sunday afternoon, after Heather MacAllistair picked you, Dean, and the dogs up?”

  “Heather was really worried because the fog and cloud was closing in again fast, and it was almost dark. We tried to reach Selena and Raj on radio, and on their satellite text device, but there was no reply. And there was no sign of them at the pickup location. Heather said she had maybe minutes before the fog shut us down, and she’d try looking for them along the route they were supposed to have been working. Then, as we popped through some mist …” She stilled, stared at her hands. Tana waited.

  “I … I’m sorry, I …” She reached for another tissue, blew her nose.

  “Take your time.”

  Moistening her lips, Veronique continued. “I didn’t register at first what I was seeing—it was … a large animal kill. I immediately thought, caribou. But … it was them … their backpacks. And wolves … Feeding.” She wiped her nose. “Heather swore and came in fast, trying to buzz them off. Some retreated.” She paused, trying to scrape together her composure. “Dean was screaming for Heather to put the chopper down. He had his rifle ready. His eyes were mad. He wanted to kill the wolves. But if Heather had landed, yes, we might’ve killed those wolves, but there was nothing we could’ve done that would have saved Selena and Raj, and the mist was choking back in so fast … if we’d landed we wouldn’t have been able to get out, or call for help, either.” Tears streamed suddenly down her cheeks. “The way they’d been ripped apart, it felt … evil.”

  A memory slithered through Tana’s brain—the loud scream of violence in the silence, as she’d looked over the valley that dawn, the sweet, foul, coppery smell of the kill.

  “What did you mean when you said to Dean that Selena felt stalked out there?”

  “It wasn’t just out there. It sounds dumb, and it was probably just being in the north so long that was playing with Selena’s mind—at least that’s what I thought.”

  “Go on.”

  “She said she felt followed around the village. Watched. As if someone was stalking her.”

  “Someone?”

  Veronique nodded. “About a week ago, I woke up one night. It was a full moon. Selena was out of bed, standing at the window in her sleep shirt. Shivering. I asked her what on earth she was doing, and she said there was something out there. Watching our window, watching us sleep. She said she was woken by a ticking noise against the pane.”

  Tana glanced at the window, then up at the drape rail. No drapes. No blinds.

  “I know. We complained, but Viktor whoever said he’d get it fixed. He never did. And there were no other rooms available. I told Selena to get back into bed, and that’s when she told me she was being stalked, watched around town, out in the field.”

  “And did you see anything? Outside the window?”

  “No. My guess at the time was that it was night animals. Coyote. Fox. Bear. That vacant lot leads to the rear of the diner where the garbage is kept.”

  “So you didn’t believe her—that she had a stalker?”

  Veronique hesitated. “No. I … I didn’t know what to make of her sometimes. She could be a dreamer. An idealist. A little bit weird.”

  “Was Selena romantically involved?”

  “With Jamie TwoDove, a local, yes. He makes jewelry and lives on his dad’s spread upriver. His father does taxidermy for the Tchliko Lodge guys.”

  “Had Selena and Jamie been going out for long?”

  “They hooked up pretty early in the spring. They’d have these big philosophical conversations at the Red Moose, or around fires we’d build by the river. He used to take her to listen to old Marcie Della’s stories about the elders, and she joined him when he protested the ice road.”

  “You mentioned Dean was romantically interested in Selena as well.”

  “Yeah, but that was a one-way thing.”

  “Dean or Jamie ever show signs of jealousy?”

  Her eyes flashed up. “God, no. It wasn’t one of them stalking her, if that’s what you mean.”

  Tana closed her notebook and came to her feet. “Thanks, Veronique. I—”

  “Wait, there was something … a bit freaky.” She reached over and from under an item of Selena’s clothing she took a scrap of paper with some words printed on it. “I found this when I was packing her things.”

  Tana read the hand-scrawled words.

  … Where a midnight caribou mutilation

  awakens a howl of emptiness with ice

  where once there was heart.

  And it comes with hunger

  for blood in its mouth.

  For, in the Barrens of the soul

  monsters take toll …

  Tana looked up. “Any idea what this means?”

  “None. I have no idea where Selena got it, either.”

  The piece of paper had a pinprick hole at the top, as if it might have been pinned to something.

  … ice, where once there was heart …

  A chill washed over Tana’s skin. She felt a sense of distant drums, of stories told around campfires in the camp where her grandmother had lived. Stories her father had related out in the wilds—myths he said he’d learned from native elders.

  “Can I keep this?” Tana asked.

  “I guess.”

  Tana said, gently. “And the photo of Raj and Selena?”

  Veronique pulled one up on her phone and showed Tana a pretty, freckled young woman with long, wavy, strawberry-blonde hair. Striking green eyes. With her was a lean, tawny-complexioned male. Tall. Glistening black hair. Liquid black gaze.

  “Raj and Selena,” said Veronique.

  There was no resemblance in these faces to the mess of blood and gore Tana had seen at the north end of Ice Lake, apart from skin tone and hair color.

  “I’d like a copy of this.”

  “I’ll forward it to you. What address?”

  CHAPTER 18

  “No one was to blame,” Dean Kaminsky said as he scratched his Lab behind the ear. His dog leaned into his touch.

  “Those wolves …” He struggled, to his credit. “It’s a wild act. Nature. We forget that we humans are encroaching into their space. I heard some guys at the Red Moose last night saying that it was evil. It wasn’t. We shouldn’t make value judgment
s.”

  Tana glanced up from her notebook. “You were at the Moose last night?”

  “After the fight. For a bit, before Viktor came and cleared us all out.”

  “Veronique was there, too?”

  “Just me. I needed a beer. I … I just needed—”

  “To ease those sorrows, eh?”

  His mouth tightened.

  “You wanted to shoot them at the time—those wolves.”

  Heat rose into his face above the beard. He shuffled, ever so slightly, on the bunk where he was seated.

  Then, as if having decided to draw his student philosophical line in the snow and test the strength of it, he came to his feet, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and squared his shoulders. “If you’re done with the questions?”

  She stood, too, in order not to be at a spatial disadvantage. On her feet, Tana was maybe an inch or two taller than Dean Kaminsky, but what he lacked in height he made up in understated muscular power and breadth of shoulder. Long, strong arms. Prominent brow, pale eyes sunken deep and safely protected in hard bone caves. Low center of gravity. The kind of guy built to take a punch, and give one.

  “Two more questions,” she said.

  He kept his hands in his pockets, his gaze locked on hers.

  “The lure that Raj and Selena worked with, what was it made of, and where did they get it?”

  “Mixed it themselves. On Crow TwoDove’s property—the father of the guy Selena was banging. Crow supplied the guts and blood and stuff from his taxidermy business. Tchliko Lodge brings him the kills from their hunts, if clients want an animal stuffed. He scrapes out the insides, keeps it in barrels in a shed on his farm for Selena and Raj.”

  “So they mixed the lure primarily from animal guts and blood.”

  “Rotted blood. Fish, too. Added some vanilla.”

  “It wasn’t easier to use a commercial hunting lure?”

  “Expensive, and chemical. This stuff was available. It’s not uncommon to make bear lure from what’s around.”

  “It was kept in a secured shed?”

  “Sealed drums. Corrugated, galvanized steel shed. Locked. They did their best to ensure it wasn’t attracting animals out there.”