In the Barren Ground (13 page)

CHAPTER 16

Tana put down the phone and scrubbed her hands hard over her face, making her skin raw. Anger stabbed at her brain.

She’d just called her superior in Yellowknife, Sergeant Leon Keelan, to press upon him the immediate need for replacement staff and a new pilot. Reception had been cool. Sarge Keelan was a close friend of Staff Sergeant Garth Cutter. Married with three kids, Cutter was highly placed in the federal force, his policing career on a fast track. He’d set his sights high and was after a commissioned post, and beyond that, possibly a role with CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Tana knew all of this because she’d let him fuck her. Not just once, but several times, when they were both drunk. On each occasion Tana had been so wasted she could barely stand. Or think. And that’s the way she’d wanted it, because when she was sober, all she could think of was Jim. And how he’d taken his life. And why. And how she hadn’t seen it coming, and had done nothing to stop him. And he’d used her gun.

And now Cutter was the father of her baby.

A baby Jim had wanted. A baby she’d told Jim she
didn’t
want. Not yet. She was too young. Only twenty-four. She’d wanted to make detective first—that had been her goal. Cutter’s words swam into her head.

Don’t the fuck embarrass me with this shit. Get rid of it. Promise me you’ll get rid of it, and get your aboriginal ass the hell out of town. Because you’re mud on this force now, if I have anything to do with it . . . like mother like daughter, eh . . . the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree . . .

Shame prickled her skin. Remorse. Fury. Frustration. A need to hurt herself, punish herself,
do
something exploded inside her. Tana pressed both palms flat on the metal desk, and inhaled deeply, slowly. Tentatively she moved her right hand, and placed it over her belly.

Screw them, happy baby. It’s you and me now. Screw them all, because we’re going to do this . . . We’re going to turn history around. I’m going to be a good mom.

And she’d do it in private—wouldn’t reveal who the father was, because as much as she’d like to nail Cutter’s ass to a wall, she had no intention of hurting Winnie Cutter, his wife, or their kids. This was not their fault. This was her own fault. This was
her
shame. She’d slept with a married man. A man she had fucking zero respect for, because he’d shown himself to be a racist, adulterous, misogynistic prick, and he’d used her. Just like all the men who’d used her mother, and Tana before this. And she couldn’t blame anyone but herself for that. She’d allowed it—maybe she’d even wanted it as a form of self-hatred. But she knew Garth Cutter for the man he really was. She knew the face he hid from the public, and she’d bet her life that she was not his first affair, as sick and sordid as it had been.

Leon Keelan knew, too.

And this was why—she was certain of it—they’d been so keen to send her up here to nearly the Arctic Circle, to the Canadian policing equivalent of the Siberian salt mines, under the pretense that it was because she was part Dogrib, and that the Twin Rivers settlement area needed someone of the north, who understood the culture. And she figured that whatever went wrong out here now, or continued to go wrong, they were going to let her wallow. They were going to hold off sending resources as long as they reasonably could. They were going to set her up to fail. Cutter would like that. In fact he’d probably like her dead. She rubbed her face again.

She would prove them wrong.

She got up, poured a mug of tea from the pot she’d left warming atop the cast iron stove, added honey. She’d also phoned the coroner’s office, mentioning her specific interest in the extra bones, and had been told a full report following the autopsies and other forensic investigations would be forthcoming. She was the beat cop, the first responder who had simply secured the scene, and they were treating her as such.

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 some
one
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, sing-song 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 sides. “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.