In the Barren Ground (33 page)

CHAPTER 38

Saturday, November 10. Day length: 7:20:37 hours.

It was 3:24 p.m. when Crash drew up outside his house on his snowmobile. He and Tana had finally made it back into Twin Rivers around 2:30 p.m. The snow had stopped falling and wind was now pushing through the valley, briefly clearing away some of the cloud cover. He’d escorted her to the police station where her dogs had gone insane with happiness to see her. Both animals looked as though they were going to be fine, and it had lifted his heart to see her with them.

Rosalie would still be at the station for a while, and Bob the maintenance guy had been up on the roof. He’d cleared the small antenna that fed through to the mobile satellite phone dock inside the office, enabling Tana to use her portable phone inside. And now, in this small window before the next storm rolled in, she’d be able to contact Yellowknife and call in a major crimes team. How soon detectives might be able to fly into Twin Rivers was another question, but at least backup would be on standby. Crash had told Tana he was going home to shower, change, see that the airstrip was being plowed before the next dump arrived, and to check on his business. He also wanted to see that Mindy was okay.

He killed his engine and the sound of a scraping plow filled the air. The contract guy was busy running his blades over the strip. Crash removed his helmet, waved. The man waved back from inside his truck.

Gathering his gear, Crash trotted up the porch stairs. His house was in darkness despite the twilight. Snowdrifts had blown up across his front door. He frowned. Mindy must not have left the building since the snow had started falling. But why so dark?

He tried the door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open, stepped over the snow piles, and entered his house. The interior was cold, all the heat off.

“Mindy?” He dumped his stuff in the mudroom, clicked on the lights, and removed his boots. “Mindy—you here?” No answer came.

He made his way through to the living room, flicking on the lights and turning up the heat. The baseboard heaters ticked and creaked as they came to life. Empty booze bottles and beer cans littered the coffee table. He cursed.

“Mindy!”

Silence.

Crash marched down the hall and flung open the door to the spare room. The bed was mussed up, the closet open, empty. He swore again. She must have had a relapse, got drunk, and boomeranged right back to that old boyfriend of hers. She hadn’t done that for almost two months. He’d hoped she’d kicked that bad habit.

Feeling uneasy, he made for the bathroom, stripped down, and stepped into a steaming shower. A cocktail of adrenaline and anxiety churned through his gut as he soaped himself and thought of Tana. And her case. Of Mindy. Of his next steps in contacting the FBI, Interpol, the choices he was making that would put him out there again.

He dried off, dressed in clean gear, and made his way into the kitchen to grab a beer or two. Or at least see if Mindy had left him any to grab. He’d told Tana he would bring takeout from the diner, and he was in the mood for a brew with his food tonight. His plan was to spend nights at the station until Tana’s backup arrived. In the meanwhile, Rosalie and her dogs were with her, and people were out and about in the village, making full use of the break in the weather. Whoever might have killed those four, and who’d been trying to spook Tana, was not someone who wanted to get caught. That much was evident from the remote locations chosen for the killings, and the considerable efforts made to cover up the crimes. This was some sick son of a bitch who skulked in darkness and shadow. He’d wait until nighttime to strike, when and if Tana was alone. If he was going to strike near home at all.

The blood caught his attention the moment he entered the kitchen—smears of it on the white stove and across the counter. His pulse kicked. He lowered his gaze to the floor. There were drops on the linoleum. He crouched down, gently touching the tip of a finger to one of the dark beads. Tacky. Old. His heart beat faster as he came to his feet. Then he saw it—the meat thermometer lying on the countertop behind a bowl of mandarins. Slowly, a dark sensation leaked into him. Crash picked up the thermometer. Traces of blood smeared the silver shaft designed for spiking into raw meat.

Shit.

Mindy had done this once before in his house, that he knew of, hurt herself. He’d found her cutting her arm with a razor blade after she’d discovered that her jackass of an ex-boyfriend was screwing someone else. Tana’s words filtered suddenly into his mind.

. . . How vindictive is Mindy? She’s made no secret she hates me, and likes you. The deer eyes are a link between you and me. Could she have done this—be trying to say something?

Crash headed fast for the mudroom, punched his arms into his jacket, pulled on his snow boots. He grabbed his hat and gloves and stepped out into the cold. The noise of an approaching chopper pounded the air, and out of the clouds emerged a bright-yellow bird—Twin Squirrel. Heather.

As Crash descended the stairs, the Squirrel landed gently in a swirling blizzard of a downdraft and swishing conifers. He stopped to watch the doors open and three guys hop out as the rotors slowed. Contract workers for the ice road, judging by their gear. They ran from the chopper in a crouch, making for a truck idling down near the end of the runway, waiting to pick them up.

The rotors stopped, and the pilot door opened. Crash made his way over as Heather removed her headset, and jumped down in her winter flight suit.

“Hey,” she said with a smile, her blue eyes mirroring the color in the gaps of cloud behind her. “Took a run in the weather window.” She nodded to the men climbing into the truck, which was puffing white exhaust clouds into the air. “Those poor bastards were stuck out at their job site in the storm for two nights.” She laughed, closing her door behind her. She made for the hangar. “Never seen anyone so happy to get a ride back to civilization,” she called over her shoulder.

“Have you seen Mindy?” he asked, following her into the hangar.

She stopped, turned, looked into his eyes, and must have seen the worry in his face, because she said, “No, why? What’s wrong?”

He exhaled in frustration. “I don’t know where she is. Last time I saw her was . . . shit, I think it was Tuesday or Thursday morning.”

“I saw her Tuesday afternoon,” she said. “I thought you meant had I seen her today.”

“Where?”

“She was walking along the road to the village. I drove by in time to see her getting into a dark Ford truck.”

“Whose truck?”

“I don’t know. Gray. It had a logo-sticker thing across the tailgate—a red ram’s head.”

“Markus Van Bleek? Shit.”
Suspected assassin. Trafficker of women, diamonds . . .

“You didn’t try to stop her?”

“Crash, I’m not Mindy’s keeper. I don’t know where she was going.”

“Which way did the truck go?”

“Northeast. The road to Wolverine Falls.”

Van Bleek had a friend with a cabin up there. Crash had made it his business to know where Van Bleek went, the company he kept. And if the South African merc hadn’t left town in this small gap of weather, chances are he’d still be here, because returning to the WestMin exploration camp via land in this new layer of deep powder would be a full-on expedition that could take all day and longer. Crash spun around and made for his machine.

“Hey,” Heather called after him. “Where are you going?”

“To find Mindy.”

Before mounting his sled, he dialed Tana’s sat number with his own portable sat phone. He glanced up at the sky, checking the weather as the phone rang. Would be full dark in minutes. And already a fresh bank of black clouds was broiling in from the north. His call kicked to an automated voice mail system. Clearly, Tana was still busy on the phone to Yellowknife. He left her a message saying he was heading out to find Markus Van Bleek because Mindy had gone with him to Wolverine Falls two days ago, and he believed she could be in serious trouble.

“Markus might even be our guy. If I’m not back before Rosalie leaves tonight,
please
get someone to come stay with you.” He killed the call, pocketed his device, pulled on his helmet, and straddled his machine. He gunned the engine, revved, and roared around the back of his house, punching through drifts, taking a shortcut toward the road that led upriver to Wolverine Falls.

CHAPTER 39

Tana paced in front of her whiteboard. It was 5:14 p.m. and black outside. She’d phoned Yellowknife as soon as they’d returned from the wilderness, and had been relieved to not only get a satellite signal through, but to learn that neither Leon Keelan nor Garth Cutter were in the building. Her call had gone to a young detective in major crimes—Corporal Mack Marshall—to whom she’d relayed her information. He’d jumped all over it and secured a green light to form a team that was on standby for the first possible flight out of Yellowknife.

Now they waited for weather.

Meanwhile Cpl. Marshall had appointed a 24/7 point person at HQ to take Tana’s calls, and answer questions. Databases were also being scoured for similar “attacks” or missing persons/predation cases throughout the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and the more remote regions of the provinces across Canada. The autopsy reports and forensics in the Apodaca-Sanjit case had also been put on fast track, and the Regan Novak and Dakota Smithers cases had been officially reopened. Rosalie had done her part by securing the cleaner from the band office to ready the small RCMP cabin by the river for an influx of law enforcement personnel. Viktor at the Broken Pine Motel had also been put on notice that they might need rooms.

Tana’s room with the whiteboard would become the incident room. She was totally amped that she’d pulled this off without Cutter or Keelan. No more stonewalling, because they’d look like asses if they tried to mess with the snowball she’d gotten rolling now. But nerves nipped at her, too. Her backup was not here. Yet.

She stopped pacing, and reread the names she’d written in the first column. She reached up to rub out Crash’s name, but stopped just short. Conflict twisted. She believed in him, she really did. But a new team coming in here would see the statement she’d taken from Heather, read the comments about the red AeroStar chopper, learn that Crash owned one of the only two in this area, and the only one that had done any flying time—because MacAllistair’s was still barely out of the box—and they’d want to know why his name was
not
up there.

Tana ran through the other persons of interest: Elliot Novak, Markus Van Bleek, Crow TwoDove, Jamie TwoDove, Caleb Peters, Teevak Kino, Big Indian, Harry Blundt. Other mine crew? Dean Kaminsky. She grabbed her black marker and to the list she added Henry Spatt, Alan Sturmann-Taylor, Damien Sallis, and his gang. She rubbed her brow. It was half the bloody town, and she still hadn’t really narrowed anything down.

Don’t beat yourself up. You dug up enough evidence to bring in a team. You’re not a homicide detective. You’re a twenty-four-year-old pregnant beat cop who’s in way over her head with a potential serial killer loose in your jurisdiction that covers 17,500 square miles and you’re socked in with a series of rolling blizzards.

You need to let people help you, Tana, my child. Everyone needs a tribe. Man is not strong without tribe . . .

Yeah, well, she had asked for help. Big first step, Gran. And she’d made another friend out here now, apart from Charlie—Crash. Whatever happened now, her gut told her Crash would have her back. Another big step. Trust.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek, debating it, then added Charlie Nakehk’o’s name. She felt uncomfortable doing so. Charlie was old, and whether he had the sheer physical power to hurt someone the way Apodaca and Sanjit had been bashed and ripped apart, she didn’t know. However, while she guessed that all four victims had been dealt violent blows to the bases of their skulls, and had been ripped open with a clawlike tool, she couldn’t be certain until the latest autopsy results. And even then, questions might remain about what actually killed them, and what the animals did after, given the time the bodies were out there.

Her mind went again to their visit with Novak. The boot print in his shed. It linked him to the killings, even peripherally. Who was his visitor?

Who brought him cigarettes?

The only place to officially buy cigarettes locally would be the diner shop. She could check purchase records with Marcie. But she’d bet her life they were also being sold illegally, probably by Damien and his mates. Or, Novak’s smokes could have come from someone outside the community. Someone who flew a small red chopper.

She kept coming back to that AeroStar. And the one in Crash’s backyard.

“Tana?” Rosalie’s voice came from the office. “I’m going now, is that okay?”

Tana’s gaze shot to the dark window. She wondered where Crash was. “Fine, Rosalie, yeah. Thanks.”

Rosalie came to the door. “Want me to go by Chief Dupp’s place, get him to find someone to come stay with you? Crash said not to leave you alone.”

“I, uh, no, I’m fine. I’m sure he’ll be here any minute. Just lock the door on your way out, will you?”

“Alright then. Good night.”

“Night, Rosalie.”

Tana sifted through the papers on the table and found MacAllistair’s statement. She read her notes—MacAllistair had claimed the AeroStar was not O’Halloran’s, because O’Halloran had told her it was not his. Tana pursed her lips, recalling the sense she’d gotten that MacAllistair was trying to cover for O’Halloran, protect him. Her mind went to Mindy, and how Mindy had noted that MacAllistair and O’Halloran had had intimate relations.

Tana cursed and pushed the report aside. She was referring to Crash by his last name again, going all official, allowing doubt to creep in, and it was making her twitchy.

Was she being blind? Could he really be a seductive sociopath leading them down the forest path?

Tana cast her mind back to when she’d first arrived at the WestMin camp, and she’d overheard MacAllistair asking Crash about the AeroStar. She could picture them there, in the mist, talking.

That red damn chopper.

No one else had seen it, either. Just MacAllistair. It was like a little red . . . herring. Tana froze. Red herring. The term came from hunting—the act of dragging a smelly fish across a trail to send tracking dogs off course. A ruse. Misdirection. A lie.

Jesus. She began to pace. No . . .
couldn’t
be.

But MacAllistair
was
the only witness of the AeroStar. The K9 biologists hadn’t seen it. According to Veronique Garnier and Dean Kaminsky, neither had Apodaca nor Sanjit. No one from the camp had reported seeing it. Could MacAllistair have been lying? And why
would
she lie? To throw a cop off. And how better to do so, but to then make it appear that she was covering, protecting, the person she’d stuck into the line of fire.

If
Tana believed Crash—and she
had
to, she’d come so far down this road with him—then he’d not been there in his AeroStar on the afternoon of Friday, November 2. Maybe there’d never been an AeroStar there at all.

Blood began to boom in Tana’s ears as she pictured meeting MacAllistair that first night. The woman had been edgy, pacing, shivering. Pale. Inebriated. Eyes bloodshot. Tall—around five foot eleven. Strong handshake. Cold, rough hands that were hurt and chapped. Big-boned woman. Athletic. Tana grabbed the back of a chair with both hands, closed her eyes, taking herself right back to that night. Visualizing the fog, the cold, the swirling snowflakes. MacAllistair wearing a down jacket, no gloves . . .

You must be the new cop
. . .

MacAllistair had dropped her cigarette butt to the snow, and ground it out with her boot. She’d reached forward to shake Tana’s hand.

. . . Nice to meet you. Sorry about the circumstances.

Her boot. Grinding out the cigarette.

The leather had been dark reddish-brown. Came just above the ankle. Thick sole. Shearling-lined. Like a classic Baffin-Arctic work boot. MacAllistair was tall enough, big enough, to wear a men’s size nine. Ex-military, she’d seen brutal action. At the time of meeting her and learning that she’d quit the US military to come north, Tana had wondered about the possibility of PTSD.

Her mind shot back to the interview at the yurt—MacAllistair laying her pack of cigarettes on the table before pouring herself a coffee.

Marlboro Lights.

She’d not considered a female. Was it possible? Could Heather MacAllistair be psychotic? Psychopathic? Could she be capable of PTSD-induced violence, rage? Was it something that went back a hell of a lot further? How long had she been doing this, and where?

Where had she come from in the States? What was her history? Why had she been discharged from the military?

Tana tapped her marker faster and faster against the palm of her hand as she paced, her brain racing, her pulse galloping, her skin heating with adrenaline.

Heather MacAllistair had been in town for more than four years. She was highly independent and mobile. She could travel vast distances. She’d had opportunity in every one of those cases. She potentially had the right boots to have made that print. She’d flown those kids all season, and knew their movements, and when the weather windows would close.

And according to that photo at Tchliko Lodge, she’d also been in the Nehako Valley the fall that geologist had disappeared and wound up dead and scavenged.

She lived on TwoDove’s ranch. She had access to bear lure. Taxidermy tools. Other tools in the barn. Tana’s mind went back to the stained-looking flight suits she’d seen hanging at the back of the barn. The dry bags, the kind used for river trips to keep the contents from getting wet. The stained waders hanging outside the lure shed. These were things that could be worn for a messy attack. Body parts—like a heart—and the dirty clothes could be transported in those bags without leaving blood all over the interior of a chopper.

Bile washed up the back of Tana’s throat at the sick thoughts.
Why?
What would motivate someone to do this? What satisfaction did they get from it, or need from it?

A female serial killer? Female violence. Rage. A need for power—to dominate. Tana was not unfamiliar with female aggression. Her mother had beaten her nearly unconscious on more than one drunken occasion before the age of eight, after which she’d fought back, or managed to get away.

Her mind went to Novak. The boot print in his shed. Could it have been MacAllistair’s? She’d have easy access to Novak’s camp via her chopper. Lots of places to land.

But why visit him? Why bring him things? Why—

The affair.

No. Novak had said the woman he’d been involved with had left town. But he could have lied. He was mad—he could be speaking with double meaning. He might have meant that MacAllistair had gone, left him figuratively.

Tana reached for the sat phone that she was now wearing secured to her duty belt. She dialed the point person Marshall had given her in Yellowknife, and she cut right to the chase.

“Heather MacAllistair, a local helicopter pilot, flies for Boreal Air, she’s ex-US Army—I need to know why she was discharged from the military, and when. Where she came from before enlisting. I also need to be connected with the public mental health worker who was appointed to Twin Rivers three and four years ago. There should be a government record.”

Tana hung up, and tried Crash’s number. It kicked straight to voice mail. She checked the time. Where in the hell was he? A soft spurt of worry went through her. She went into the office, checked the door locks, stoked the fire, and petted her dogs, who were sprawled out on their beds in front of the stove. “Where is he, boys?” Doubt, insecurity, a deepening unease corded through her. Was she on the wrong track? Crap, she had no idea what she was doing.