In the Barren Ground Page 8

  “This way, this way,” Blundt said, taking off at a trot. Tana suspected the geologist had only two speeds: High. And off. Like Toyon when he was a pup. She hefted her pack and guns up onto her shoulder, and cast a backward glance at Van Bleek. He was offloading his own ATV.

  “Coming?” she said.

  “No.”

  She hesitated. “Thanks.”

  He grunted. “Any time you need help at a slaughter, Constable, I’m your man.”

  She held his gaze for a moment, disquiet rustling through her, then she turned to follow Blundt. The sky was that eerie indigo peculiar to northern nights. A green and yellow aurora pulsed softly along the horizon. Her feet ached as she walked. Her lower back felt as though it had been hit with a mallet. Her headache didn’t help.

  “Your pilot left,” said Blundt as she caught up. “But Heather is still here. She’s probably sobered up enough to fly you back tonight, unless you want to bunk at camp.”

  Tana crooked a brow. “Good. I need a statement from her. From you, too. I already got one from Van Bleek.” She’d taken impressions of his boots as well. “I’ll also need to talk to Teevak Kino.”

  Blundt stalled in his tracks, looked up at her. “Why? It’s a natural death, an accident. Nothing criminal. Is there?”

  She looked into his eyes. It was hard to read him, too. Especially in this light. He seemed to be constantly moving, agitated, even while stationary. “I need to file my police report,” she said. “Standard procedure in a death that occurs outside of a hospital or doctor’s care. The coroner’s office will investigate further. There will most likely be a set of recommendations that comes out of it, to help prevent similar attacks in the future.”

  “Hmm,” he declared, then he turned and continued his crablike scuttle toward the yurt. The circular tent structure was set upon a wooden platform to accommodate the depth of the coming snows. Smoke came out a metal flue vented through the top of the yurt. Tana could smell food. Her stomach growled.

  “Where is Heather now?” she said.

  “One of the cabins. Sleeping. I’ll go rouse her and send her over to the mess.”

  “She was on a bit of a bender?”

  “Could say.”

  “Regular occurrence?” Tana asked.

  “Anything you want to know about Heather, you can ask her yourself.” Blundt stomped up onto the wooden deck and reached for the door. Tana followed.

  “Your chef didn’t go with the rest of the crew to Yellowknife?” she said.

  “Cook?” Blundt snorted. “That man thinks he’s above them all, he does. Doesn’t drink. That’s the main problem. All full of native mysticism and whatever other mumbo-jumbo stories. But he can cook, I’ll hand him that. And he holds his own as a bouncer when things get rowdy out here. Happens every now and then, when you mix a bunch of guys who’ve been in the bush too long with some good strong booze. Got a powerful left hook, that Indian.”

  Blundt opened the door. Steamy warmth rushed out to meet Tana.

  “Go on in,” he said, putting her bag inside the door. “I’ll go rattle Heather’s cage. When you’re done eating and interviewing her, come find me.”

  It was hot inside, pots steaming away on an industrial-sized gas stove. She dumped her gear on the wood floor near the door and removed her down jacket. She needed a shower. But more than anything she needed some food and something to drink.

  A man stood with his back to her, stirring a pot. He was about six two, wide shoulders. A long, skinny, black ponytail hung down the middle of his chef’s jacket.

  “Hey,” Tana said.

  He turned. His face was broad. Flared cheekbones. Pocked, reddish-brown skin. Black eyes. Those eyes consumed her in silence. The pot behind him bubbled noisily.

  “Officer,” he said, slowly, wiping his hands across his apron.

  “Tana Larsson,” she smiled. It felt weak. Everything about her felt weak.

  He observed her a moment longer. She noted a fresh cut and bruising across his jaw. Scratches on his knuckles.

  “Harry Blundt said I might be able to find a cup of coffee and something to eat in here,” she offered.

  “Got moose stew warmed up. Coffee’s on the boil. You must be cold. You’ve been out a while. Take a load off—I’ll bring you some grub.”

  With relief, she pulled out a metal chair and seated herself at the table closest to the counter where he worked. “Whatever you’ve got will be great.”

  He reached for a bowl, started spooning in slop. Steam curled. She watched his hands, wondering whom he’d had a dustup with.

  “You didn’t go with the rest of the crew to Yellowknife, then?”

  He dumped the steaming bowl and a spoon in front of her, along with a mug of coffee. “Cream and sugar are on the table, there. And no, not my thing. Big piss-up. Don’t do the booze anymore.” He paused. “Bad shit, that wolf stuff.”

  “Yeah.” Tana adjusted her sitting position to relieve the pinch from her vest. She shoveled a spoonful into her mouth, closed her eyes for a second, just letting the warmth fill her. “Holy crap,” she said, looking up at him. “This is actually amazing.”

  “Moose.”

  “Not like the moose stew that I make.”

  He grinned. It made him look scarier.

  “So what do I call you?” she asked, delivering another spoonful to her mouth.

  “Indian.”

  He looked serious.

  “You must have a name.”

  “Big Indian. That’s my name.”

  Tana chewed slowly as she weighed him. “Your legal name?”

  “Yup.”

  “Your parents had a sense of humor, then?”

  “I had it changed.”

  “What was it before?”

  “I don’t say the old name. It belonged to another man. The old me. This—” He prodded his considerable chest with the tips of all ten fingers. “This is the new me. Big Indian.”

  “So … I should call you Big, or Indian—which do you prefer?”

  “Either.” He went back behind his counter, emptied garbage, peels, bones into a pail. “Or both.”

  She watched the garbage. “Where does that go?”

  “Landfill.”

  “Fenced?”

  “Nope.”

  “So, wild animals—”

  “Yup. They scavenge in the dump.”

  “Wolves, too?”

  He swung suddenly around to face her. Intensity smoldered in his eyes. The interior of the yurt seemed to shrink. Tana stopped her spoon halfway between bowl and mouth.

  “Yup,” he said slowly, quietly. Deep voice. “Wolves. Bear. Coyotes. Fox. Ferrets. Eagles. You name it—those noble creatures—they all eat the garbage dumped in there. The men, they been feeding those same four wolves by hand, too. Last summer, when the crew sometimes ate on the deck outside, when the bugs weren’t so bad, they’d toss scraps to the animals right from where they sat. And at night, I seen those animals slinking between the cabins and tents sniffing for more.”

  “And you believe those are the same wolves that attacked those two biologists?” Her spoon remained suspended.

  “Yu-up.”

  “What makes you think they’re the same?”

  “From what Teevak said. Matched the description. And they’ve tried to bite humans before.”

  She lowered her spoon. “When?”

  “’Bout a week ago. Two of Harry’s guys went to look at the old plane wreck behind the airstrip, back near the dump. It was getting dark. Wolves came out of the trees and circled them. Then the big black one moved in on one of the guys. He kicked at it. It snapped and snarled, and retreated, but then one after the other, they came, trying to bite the men, like they was testing to see if they’d be easy prey. Had to beat ’em back with broken branches and throwing rocks. The men thought it was a good laugh after they’d calmed themselves with mugs of whiskey.” He yanked open the gas-powered refrigerator, hauled out a hunk of red meat, slapped it onto a boar
d. He reached for a carving knife, waved the tip at her. “Those wolves probably followed those biologist kids to the north end of that lake. Those kids had the stink of the lure on them to start with. And the wolves probably did the same thing as they did with those two guys looking at the plane wreck. Only this time they were bolder.”

  Tana thought of the deep clawlike gouge marks on the bodies. The bear prints. She wasn’t so sure.

  He sliced into the meat. “It’s like with those other two girls who were killed. Bad shit, that. Happening all over again.”

  “What other two?”

  He cubed the chunk of meat that he’d sliced, and scraped the pieces of flesh into a pot. “Three, four years ago. The Mountie’s kid was the first. Mauled to death up a tributary of the Wolverine.”

  “What Mountie?”

  “Elliot Novak.”

  Her pulse quickened. “Wolves?”

  “Maybe bear, maybe wolf. They never could tell for sure. Maybe something else—but wolves and a bear ate parts of her, for sure. They shot a female grizz and a pack of wolves nearby. There was human flesh in all their bellies. Ripped her head clean off her body.”

  Tana went cold.

  He started slicing off another cut of meat.

  “What, exactly, happened?”

  “Don’t rightly know. No one does. Elliot took his daughter, Regan, ice fishing for the weekend. Early November it was. Somehow Regan left the tent during the night. Her dad found her body the next morning, being torn apart by wolves in the forest, just upriver from where they were sleeping. He hadn’t heard a thing.”

  Rosalie’s words curled through Tana’s brain. He’s still out there, in the woods. He’s gone bush. It’s the white-man cops. This place messes with their white-man heads … Jesus Christ. Is that what happened to him? He lost his daughter to wolves?

  “You said there was another one.”

  “Following year. Also just at the start of the snows—first week of November. Dakota Smithers. She was only fourteen years old.” He cubed the next slab of meat as he spoke. Tana could smell it. She pushed her bowl aside, appetite gone.

  “Dakota was part of the culture camp that the Twin Rivers School used to hold every year out at Porcupine Lake, to help the kids stay in touch with their indigenous roots. She and some others went out with their dogsleds one afternoon. Dakota got separated from the group when fog rolled in. Dogs came back with the sled. No Dakota. Found her three days later. Eaten by wolves, bear, other scavengers. Couldn’t say what killed her, though.”

  Tana felt ill.

  “So it wasn’t the same wolves that—”

  “Nope. I told you. Those wolves and the bear that fed off Regan were killed by wildlife officers. It was Regan’s DNA in their bellies.” He pointed the bloodied knife at her again. “See, now, that is where Elliot went truly mad. He believed someone had killed his kid, and left her in the forest for the animals. He got to convincing Dakota’s mother, Jennie, that the same person had gotten her daughter, too. Made him totally nuts, looking for some monster, when it was just the way of the wild. Wife left him. He went into the bush in the end.”

  “And he’s still out there?” she said.

  “Yup.”

  “You sure?”

  “So I hear.”

  “From who?”

  He shrugged. “Here and there.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Badlands. Nobody from town will go in the badlands.” His gaze locked with hers, and he fell silent. Tana had a bizarre sensation that he was transferring things, thoughts, into her head with his intensity. And she was seized by an absurd sense of time warping, as if this place had been shifted slightly. Into another realm. Where different laws of physics and logic applied. She needed sleep. Bad.

  The door swung open suddenly, and in blew a bluster of ice crystals off the snow. Tana jumped.

  “Sorry to spook you,” MacAllistair said, stomping her boots, and closing the door behind her. She wore shades in spite of the darkness. She stilled upon sensing the tension in the yurt. “What?” she said. “Did I interrupt something?”

  CHAPTER 11

  Heather poured a coffee and seated herself opposite Tana.

  “Big Indian messing with minds again?” she asked, stirring sugar and cream into her mug. She pushed her shades onto the top of her head, exposing a puffy black eye.

  “Bad night?” Tana said.

  “Probably not worse than yours. What can I tell you?” She took a deep draft from her mug, cradling it with both hands.

  “How’d you hurt your eye?”

  “Happens when you get so shit-faced that you can’t stand up.” She held Tana’s gaze, daring the cop to say something, to pass judgment. Then she smiled. It lit her bloodshot eyes, and she still looked pretty. “Ever been in that state, officer? Where you just need to block it all out. Ever done something stupid like that?”

  A memory washed into Tana’s chest. With it, shame. She took a sip of her own coffee, and said, “So, I guess you wouldn’t be up to flying me home tonight.”

  “Hell no, I’m good.” MacAllistair took another hit of caffeine, leaned back in her chair, smiled again, and looked halfway normal. “I’m practiced. We work hard up here. Play harder. Keeps us busy long dark nights. I’ll take you home once you’ve wrapped up here—regular rates for the RCMP. Sky is good and clear. Won’t be for long. Besides, I need to get back to base. Only stayed ’cause you asked me to. What do you need?”

  Tana removed her notebook and pen from her pocket. She flipped the book open. “Run the times, dates by me again—when did you pick Selena Apodaca and Raj Sanjit up from Twin Rivers?”

  MacAllistair related her memories of Friday, from when she’d taken off with the crews in the early morning, the route she’d flown, buzzing over the camp, seeing wolves along the lake—repeating much of what she’d already told Tana the night they’d met.

  While she spoke, Tana took notes, and Big Indian listened, a sullen shadow in the kitchen, stirring his pot.

  “And after you dropped the K9 crew off on Friday morning, what did you do then?”

  “I flew back to Twin Rivers, and ferried other folk back and forth—surveyors for the ice road. Hydro guys. Until the weather blew in.”

  “You couldn’t get in all day Saturday, either?”

  “I could fly a few other areas, but definitely not Headless Man. The fog sits like a soup on that lake. Cliffs hold it in like a basin. First window was Sunday afternoon. And it was hardly a break, but the wind had turned, and usually when that happens some of the fog clears off the north end of Ice Lake, so I gave it a shot. I got Dean and Veronique and their dogs first. They were farther up the valley, along the river. And then we flew in to Selena and Raj’s pickup location. They weren’t there. Like I said, we tried to raise them on radio, and via their inReach satellite texting system. No reply. So I flew back a little way along the route they would have been working, and …” She cleared her throat. “That’s when we saw the wolves feeding on them.” She wiped her mouth. Her hand trembled slightly.

  “I heard you mention seeing a red chopper on the other side of the cliff before the weather blew in on Friday.”

  Heather stilled her mug en route to her mouth, then lowered it slowly back to the table. She cupped her hands around it, a wariness entering her eyes.

  “Yeah,” she said finally. “A red AeroStar. It’s a tiny two-seater thing—barely two people can squish in. You build them from a craft kit. They come out of the Balkans. I’m making one myself.”

  “Do you know whose it was?”

  She moistened her lips. “No.”

  Tana glanced up. “Are there many around like it?”

  “Could have come in from a hundred miles any direction. Illegal hunters, diamond guys, engineers, prospectors, who knows.”

  “But is there anyone that you know in this region with one?”

  Her mouth tightened. “Crash.”

  Big Indian looked up sharply.

&nbs
p; “Wasn’t his, though,” MacAllistair said.

  “How do you know?”

  “He said so.” A pause. “Look, why do you need to know, anyway? What difference does it make to what happened to those kids?”

  “Maybe the pilot of the red AeroStar saw something that could aid with the coroner’s recommendations.”

  She nodded slowly. “So … it’s not like it’s a police matter.”

  Tana closed her book. “It’s standard procedure for police to file a report in an event like this. Thanks. You still on for the ride after I’ve checked in with Blundt?”

  “For sure.” She slugged back the rest of her coffee, grabbed the packet of smokes she’d left on the table, and pushed to her feet. “I’ll be in the hangar, waiting for you.”

  Tana shrugged back into her jacket. When she stepped out, an aurora pulsed high across the sky.

  CHAPTER 12

  Tana had barely landed back in Twin Rivers and was feeding her dogs when the call came in—big fight at the Red Moose. She wheeled her RCMP truck into the frozen parking lot, slammed on the brakes, sending her vehicle skidding to an angle in front of the stairs that led up to the old-style saloon. She killed her siren, left her light bar strobing, and flung open her door. Loud music, yelling reached her instantly.

  “Stay here!” she commanded her dogs, and she ran toward the stairs, hand ready near her sidearm.

  Pine trees swirled and swayed in the wind. Aurora borealis danced in the sky.

  She took the wooden stairs two at a time. As she reached the porch of the Red Moose, the double doors swung open. A man came hurtling backward out of the doors. His arms windmilled as he flailed wildly to keep balance, and rolled down the stairs. She sidestepped him, pushed through the doors.

  “Oh man, this is going to be good,” said someone bashing in through the doors behind her. “Cops are even here.”

  It was hot inside. Smelled like a locker room, sour with sweat, spilled beer, and wine. Music pounded. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light. It was all dark wood inside. The caricature of a neon red moose lit the bar area in reddish light.

  The fight was centered near the bar counter. Around two big young guys in particular, one laying into another, who was trying to defend himself against the attack. Men were yelling. A chair went flying, hit the mirror behind the counter. Glass shattered. A woman shrieked.