Fire in the Stars (14 page)

Chris nodded grimly. He could think of no excuse. No other explanation.

“The cap is pretty wet and muddy,” Willie was saying, “but I'd say it's a boy's size. I marked it and protected it with a piece of tarp.” He looked sympathetic. “They'll likely be able to get DNA off it.”

Chris rode the rest of the way through the darkening seas in silence, wondering how he was going to break the news to Amanda. As they approached the brightly lit harbour in Conche, he scanned the shore for the familiar sight of a bouncy red dog and Amanda's red straw hat. There was no sign of either. Only Casey, pacing the length of his wharf anxiously as he watched their approach.

“Any sign of your girlfriend out there?” Casey asked as he seized hold of the painter and tied off the boat.

“Amanda? No, why? Did she go out to meet me?”

“Some fool thing. Looking for your friend. Worried about his boat, but the one she's in ain't no better!”

“Why didn't you stop —” Chris checked himself. Casey had already helped far more than anyone had a right to expect. He started to apologize when Casey held up his hand.

“You know her. You think anyone was going to stop her? Weren't me she talked to, anyway. But she promised Thaddeus she'd be back before dark, and here it is like pitch, with no sign of her. The look in her eye, Thaddeus said. He should have knowed better.”

So should I
, Chris thought.
Damn it, so should I
.

A
manda scrambled along the shore, hoping to catch a single bar's worth of reception on her cellphone. She even climbed up on the barrens above the point. No luck.
Damn useless technology
, she railed.
There are cellphone signals all over the deserts in developing countries, but none here
. Then she noticed with alarm that the battery was low. Each moment it wasted searching for a signal drained it further. Reluctantly she turned it off entirely and pocketed it. No choice but to go back to Conche before the sky was pitch black.

When she turned to descend the head, she realized Kaylee was not with her. An irrational jolt of fear shot through her. Hurriedly she retraced her steps down to the shore, shouting for the dog. She forced her fear under control as she picked a path over the uneven rock, for a broken leg or twisted ankle would not help Phil. She had just reached her boat when Kaylee raced out of the tuckamore, her tongue lolling and her ears flying. As soon as she saw Amanda, she barked and wheeled about to head back into the woods. Amanda followed and found her standing over the lifejackets, whining.
She's picked up the smell of blood
, Amanda thought. But the moment Amanda appeared, Kaylee pressed her nose to the ground and ran deeper into the tuckamore.

“Have you got a scent, girl?” Amanda shouted. The dog was much smaller and more nimble than she was, and she wove back and forth through the dense spruce and fir with ease. Amanda struggled to keep up, hunched low and twisting to dodge the sharp branches. She cursed herself for not having put Kaylee on a leash. She needed to go back to her boat for some emergency supplies. She had her small backpack with her, containing a first aid kit, water, power bars, and a compass, as well as the matches and canteen she had taken from the lifejackets, but she'd left her beacons, blankets, and dry clothes in the boat.

The path Kaylee was taking through the woods turned her all around within minutes. When she paused to catch her breath, she took stock of her surroundings. Nothing but grey spruce trees on all sides, so densely intertwined that she couldn't see more than twenty feet in front of her. She could barely see the path she had taken, let alone the path ahead. Just as panic was creeping in, Kaylee appeared as a flash of red motion through the grey, stopping some distance ahead to check on her. The dog's expression was intense and impatient.

It was impossible to know how far she had travelled, nor even where the shore was. Impossible to know where danger lurked. A bear, a bull moose, a coyote … or even a killer. She was tempted to call Kaylee to lead her back out of the woods, but the dog was clearly on a mission.

Fearful and cautious, Amanda groped her way forward. A steep hill loomed ahead and the tuckamore thinned. Tangles of deadfall littered the forest floor, rotting and covered with moss. Kaylee leaped easily over the logs, but Amanda slipped and slithered. She was breathless, soaked in sweat, and scratched by the spruce spikes by the time she almost literally collided with Kaylee. The dog had stopped on the other side of a large tree that had been uprooted by some long-ago storm. The root ball formed a shelter of sorts, and behind it, Kaylee stood whining and sniffing the ground.

Amanda rounded the barrier and found a tangle of alder, spruce, and fir branches piled high. A man-made shelter! Made so recently that the alder leaves had barely wilted.

Her hopes surged. Had she found their camp? She began to toss aside the branches. But then she saw a hiking boot protruding from under the brush. Horror seized her throat. She tore at the branches with abandon, uncovering rocks piled to weigh the branches down. She hurled these aside, revealing a leg, another boot, a torso in a red jacket. The body lay on its back with its legs outstretched, its arms folded, and its fingers laced together as if at peace.

“No,” she murmured. “No no no.” She clawed at the face, brushing debris away until she could make out the features. Bleached of blood, eyes opaque, the locks of rakish hair plastered against the pallid brow …

Phil.

She stifled a wail of pain. Fought for breath and calm, rocking gently as the waves of memory crashed over her. Dead bodies littering the village square, dead eyes staring, flies swarming. The village dogs and the vultures circling. In the African heat, the carrion eaters rushed in quickly.

Here in the cold, remote northland, only the flies had begun.

She didn't know how long she sat at his side, overcome, before rational thought began to return. She bent over to study the body. What had happened here? She could see no sign of injury. How had he died?

Then she remembered the bloody tear in the back of the lifejacket. Swallowing bile, she forced herself to reach beneath him. Grunting and struggling against his stiff, unyielding weight, she finally rolled him over. This time she screamed aloud, putting all her horror and grief into a single, primal howl that was swallowed in seconds by the dense, empty woods.

The back of his red jacket was a mass of crusted blood. She forced herself to probe through it, feeling for the injury, and found a ragged hole in the jacket. Tears streamed freely now as she poked the hole with her finger and brushed cold, rigid flesh.

She jerked her hand back and recoiled, staring at her friend's ravaged body in disbelief. Shot or stabbed in the back. Who would do this? Why? And had that same killer then laid him to rest in a peaceful pose? Simply to hide the body or to make some small amends for what they had done?

Or had it been Tyler?

Tyler! She jerked upright, her eyes raking the grey, silent gloom. Where was Tyler? What had happened to the boy? Was he lying in another shallow grave nearby, or had he escaped and fled, terrified, into the wilderness?

“Tyler!” she screamed, cupping her hands and turning in a slow circle. Over and over until her voice was ragged and her throat ached. Straining her ears for the faintest whimper.

Dead quiet.

Amanda looked around desperately, trying to see through the increasing gloom. Kaylee was standing a few feet away, watching anxiously as if awaiting instructions. She showed no inclination to lead Amanda farther, and yet there had to be a trail. Even if it was only to another nearby grave.

She rolled Phil over onto his back again, piled the rocks and brush on top, and stood over him, smearing tears across her cheeks with her bloodied hands. She whispered a quiet, apologetic goodbye. Then she rose to face the dog and gestured to the woods. Kaylee was not a trained tracker but she had a good nose. Surely she could follow a recent scent if there is one.

“Go find Tyler, Kaylee. Find him.”

The next morning Chris Tymko was up at first light, pacing the wharf. No Amanda. He felt like a coiled spring, his gut twisted with frustration, anger, and worry. Corporal Willington had left to return to his detachment the previous evening, but not before apologetically informing Chris he was off Stink's murder case.

“Sorry,” he muttered, “Sergeant Amis's orders. Conflict of interest for you, or some damn thing.”

When Chris opened his mouth to protest, Willington shook his head. “I'm pretty much off it too, just doing admin. Amis will be here by noon, and the district commander is sending in an incident commander to coordinate the whole thing. Local detachments on the roads, Integrated Border Enforcement Team on the water, helicopter in the air. The Emergency Response Team and K-9 are on alert. Meanwhile we're putting roadblocks on the highways, checkpoints at the ports … the works. ‘Armed and dangerous,' they're calling him.”

Chris nodded in grim acceptance. In Amis's place, given the facts, he would have done the same thing. A gut feeling about Phil's innocence, based on a few months' acquaintance with the man, was not enough to counter the evidence. How well did he really know the man?
How well do any of us know one another?

Amanda was a different problem altogether. She couldn't conceive of Phil as a killer, and it was not in her nature to sit back while he struggled. She had gone off after him in a dubiously equipped boat, with limited expertise and gear for an ocean search.

Chris had slept on the daybed in Casey's kitchen and the man's wife had made him sweet tea and fried eggs before the first hint of dawn. Now a pale grey light bathed the mountain peaks in brooding green, and the harbour glistened like glass. Barely a whisper of wind came in off the ocean and the village hummed with early morning purpose, belying the brutal murder and the police manhunt about to begin.

He stared out toward the mouth of the bay, willing Amanda to appear. “By noon this place will be hopping,” he grumbled to Casey. “Incident command trailer, RCMP and forensics vehicles all over the place, police Zodiacs coming in and out. I'm damned if I'm going to do nothing.”

“No sign of your girlfriend yet, then?”

Chris was about to correct him, but checked himself. The details of their relationship didn't seem important. “Is there a boat I can borrow?”

Casey rolled his eyes. “I should be going into the boat-rental business. Pays better than fish. But I think with all the searchers heading out on the water after this Phil fella, they'll spot her soon enough.”

“But it's going to take time to get that manpower and equipment mobilized. Meanwhile I can be out on the water in fifteen minutes.”

Casey shook his head. “Might be there's fog coming in.”

Chris looked at the flat grey sky. “Search conditions look ideal to me.”

“Looks can trick you, my b'y. You don't want to be out on the ocean when the fog rolls in so thick you can't see the bow of your boat.”

“Then Amanda shouldn't be out there, either. Let me do a quick search up the coast, just up around Stink's cape.”

Casey frowned. “Thaddeus says she went the other way. She was thinking your friend might be making a run for Roddickton. It's at the top of Canada Bay, and the highway leads across the pen from there.”

“How far is it to Roddickton?”

“By boat? Fifty-odd kilometres?”

Chris did a quick calculation. Even the slowest and most capricious motorboat could do the trip in a little more than half a day, but there might not have been time for the return trip before dark. If Amanda had landed in Roddickton, she might still be on the trail of Phil within the town. He felt his hopes rise.

“I'll try that route. With any luck I'll meet her coming back. But if she's broken down, I'll see her.”

“Nobody will come looking for the two of you if you gets caught in a fog.”

“That's why I'd better get going before it comes in.”

In the end, with an exaggerated sigh, Casey lent him the same spare boat he had used the day before, a small, open skiff once used for old-fashioned cod trapping. Chris checked Amanda's supplies before packing his own gear for the trip. She had packed light, obviously not expecting to be far from civilization. Not prepared for an overnight in the wilderness, either.

He loaded up his boat with food, foul-weather gear, shelter, and first aid supplies, and then stored his hunting rifle under the seat.

Casey eyed the old .308 askance. “Budget cuts? That what they're equipping you fellas with these days?”

Chris rolled his eyes. “Don't get me started. Maybe this century we'll get the C8 Carbines everyone else has. This is my own personal rifle. Old but reliable.”

The sea was still calm when he shoved off. Hands on his hips, Casey watched him from the wharf as he fumbled the engine alive and headed out to sea. Once he'd cleared the mouth of the bay, broad swells rocked the little skiff. He headed south, hugging the steep coastal cliffs that swept down to the sea. He chugged slowly, searching the water and the shoreline constantly with his binoculars. Few boats were about. The commercial fishing boats were farther out to sea, and the autumn recreational fishery had not yet begun. Tourists rarely ventured this far from the attractions and amenities around St. Anthony.

The coastline sliced deep and straight through the ocean toward the southwest. White spray crashed against the towering cliffs, and gannets and gulls swooped eagerly overhead in search of fish. A couple of hours later, the cliffs receded into a wide bay as if the ocean itself had taken a huge bite out of the land. Soon he spotted a jumbled village and harbour nestled in the protected nook of the bay. The village of Englee.

Grateful for the break, he piloted his small boat between the wharves in the narrow harbour and pulled up beside a man doing repairs to his boat. He introduced himself as Corporal Tymko, but before he could ask about Amanda, the man's eyes brightened.

“Oh, you're here about the murder. Fella who chopped Old Stink's head off and stole his boat.”

Chris put on his solemn cop face. “I'm making inquiries, yes. Have you seen anyone fitting the description? A tall man in his mid-thirties with a young boy?”

“Not yet, no. But we're all keeping our eyes peeled.”

“Who's we?”

“Oh, all up and down the coast, you know. Word gets around. A friend of mine says he spotted a boat ashore down toward Windy Point, a ways north of Cape Rouge.”

Chris cursed inwardly. Had he been going in the wrong direction? “Stink's boat?”

The man shrugged. “Abandoned, anyway. Of course, nothing to say it's not been there for months. Nothing there but barrens.”

“Did you report it?”

“Yeah. To you.”

Chris pulled out his cellphone and turned it on. “You've got a signal!”

The man laughed and pointed to the tower at the top of the hill that loomed over the village. “Yes, b'y. We gots civilization down here in Englee.”

Chris reached Willington back in the RCMP station in Roddickton and reported what the villager had said. He waited patiently while Willington consulted his map. Then a brief, awkward silence fell.

“What are you doing in Englee, Tymko?”

“Looking for Amanda. This piece of information just fell into my lap.”