In the Barren Ground (34 page)

CHAPTER 40

Mindy came aware slowly. Everything was dark. A thick, dizzy, syrupy, swoony feeling roiled through her and she felt as though she was falling, but she wasn’t. She was lying dead still. She hurt. Whole body. Badly. Felt like she was going to throw up. What happened? Where was she? She could hear fire crackling. Hot, very hot. Her body was sweaty. She could smell herself. She stank. As consciousness crawled back in, she realized she was lying in a weird, twisted position. She tried to move, but she was trapped. Fear spiked a stake into her heart.

Her wrists were tightly bound behind her back. Her ankles were tied together. Her knees, too. Pain crackled up and down her spine and her left leg. Her head pounded and burned at the back and felt wet. She tried to swallow, and gagged. Her mouth was blocked. Taped. She shook her head, trying to call for help, to awaken from the grogginess. She must be dreaming. Nightmare.

She managed to open her eyes a crack. Her lids were swollen thick and crusted.

Things in the darkness slowly came into focus. She was in some kind of cavern. Very hot. A reddish kind of quivering glow provided the only light. She tried to remember what happened. She’d left Crash’s house . . . with her suitcase.

That man had come by with his truck. Pain sideswiped her again and vomit rose up her throat. Her stomach heaved. Panic screamed through her brain as vomit came up the back of her nose.
Couldn’t breathe—mouth was taped shut
. She thrashed her body, writhing like a snake, and then swallowed her vomit. She lay there, sweating, shaking, terror a vise around her brain, struggling to breathe through her nostrils, which burned with gut acid.

Tears pooled in her eyes, and she could see nothing again. Heather.

Heather had saved her from that man, brought her to the barn on Crow TwoDove’s ranch. The memory, like faint smoke, began to take shape.

Come this way, Mindy. It’ll be safer down here.

Why not upstairs, in the loft, where you live?

No one will find you down here. No one will hear you. You can make as much noise as you like.

I’m not hiding. What do you mean?

Take a look. You can have the whole place.

Heather had grasped an iron ring and opened a big, wooden trapdoor set into the floor at the back of the barn.

Go on. See if you like it.

Mindy had taken the first few steps down the wooden stairs into a cavernous basement below the whole barn. That’s when it came—a terrible, cracking blow to the base of her skull. Light had sparked through her brain, her vision going black and red. She’d started to fall down the stairs, but after that . . . it was blank.

Mindy edged her head carefully to the side. The wetness in her hair—was it blood? The back of her head had been split open. She struggled again to open her eyes. Gradually the room swam into some sort of shape. Long. Dark shadow at the far end. It was walled with those big concrete blocks, which had been painted shiny black. And on the walls, all around, was white paper with wild black-and-white paintings and drawings of creatures—like devils. Half man, half animal. Some of them were like skeletons with wolf heads, animal haunches, long hair on their backs. Talons for hands. They reminded her of the drawings in that old German fairy tale book in the library, where the wolves hunted children and ate Little Red Riding Hoods in snowy, dark, Scandinavian forests. The creatures in the drawings on the wall clutched heads and skulls that dripped with blood. One creature held what looked like a heart—high and dripping above an open human rib cage.

Slowly she moved her thumping head a little more to the right. Fierce flames burned red and orange in a stone stove thing at the end of the room. A chimney vented up to the roof. Near the kiln thing was a long, narrow table shoved up against the wall. Candles flickered at either end of the table. In the center was a big empty jar. Beside the jar was a hardcover book. Above the table was a shelf holding more jars. These were filled with liquid and . . . things. Parts. Organs. Like in the biology lab at school. Above the jars words had been painted in white across the black wall in big, mad-looking letters:
In the Barrens of the soul, Monsters we breed . . . retribution our creed.

Raw terror braided into confusion.

I’m inside a horror novel . . . there’s madness on these walls . . . insanity . . . Evil . . . wake up! Come out of this nightmare . . .

Her stomach heaved again, and Mindy held herself rigid, trying to control her body. If she threw up again she might suffocate and die.

Where’s Heather? Why isn’t Heather helping me?

Mindy listened carefully to see if she could discern anything beyond the crackle and pop and roar of the flames and wood in the stove. She could hear no wind. Sense no air. Just the pressing heat of this dungeon. She was underground. Down in that basement dug beneath the barn.

No one will find you down here. No one will hear you. You can make as much noise as you like.

Desperation rose like a tide in her chest. Then she stilled at a sound. Mindy moved her head to try to find the source.

Heather.

She was naked, apart from panties and a sports bra. Not an ounce of fat on her honed body. Her skin was white and gleamed with sweat. She was pulling on a flight suit. Her hair was drawn back in a tight French braid. Then came another noise.

Heather went motionless, listening. Mindy’s heart kicked.

It came again. A voice. Coming closer. Calling.

“Heather! Are you there?”

A man’s voice.

Mindy jerked her body, trying to scream. But her voice was stifled into a
mmmnh mnnnnh
sound.

Heather whipped around, glared at her.

Mindy froze. The look in Heather’s eyes—it wasn’t Heather in there. It was a mad thing. A creature. For a moment confusion seemed to chase over Heather’s face, that scared Mindy more than anything. Then Heather slowly raised her finger to her mouth.

“Shhh,” she said. “Or I’ll cut your throat. Understand?”

Mindy didn’t move.

“Understand?”

Mindy nodded.

The man’s voice came again. “Heather? I heard a scream earlier. Are you okay?”

He was coming closer. He would see the trapdoor. He had to. He’d sense the warmth coming up from the floor, or smell the fire in the kiln. He would find her. He would help her.

Quickly Heather yanked up the zip of her flight suit and put on her boots. She reached up to where weird tools and a gun were mounted on the wall. She took down a long, fat-bladed knife—like the ones that homesteaders used in the bush for all sorts of things, including clearing brambles.

She moved slowly up the stairs in a kind of crouch. Like a stalking animal.

Her phone rang and Tana jumped.
Crash?
It was 9:05 p.m. and she was now anxious.

“Constable Larsson,” she snapped into her phone.

It was Constable Fred Meriwether, the point person on duty in the Yellowknife incident room. Tana’s blood ran cold as she listened to the information he was relaying to her via satellite. Heather MacAllistair had been dishonorably discharged in connection with several incidents of violence while on tours of duty. She’d been born in a remote area of northern Alaska. Her mother died in childbirth. She was raised by her father until the age of fourteen when her father was caught in one of his own brown bear traps. When he did not return home from checking his trap lines, MacAllistair’s older brother went looking for him, but his efforts were hampered by a severe and sudden snowstorm. It appears that he found his father’s remains four days later, savaged by animals who then attacked the son, killing him, too.

MacAllistair was taken in and raised by a German aunt on her mother’s side who lived on a farm in northern Minnesota. The aunt was later found drowned in the farm reservoir. MacAllistair enlisted at eighteen, obtained her pilot’s license through the army, and saw several tours of duty. After her discharge, she worked briefly as a contract pilot around the states, and for three years in Africa for the oil industry. She’d entered Canada and obtained a work permit seven years ago.

Meriwether then gave Tana the number of the health care worker posted to Twin Rivers four years ago. The woman’s name was Vicky Zane. He then reported that fog was closing in around Yellowknife airport, but the major crimes team remained ready to fly as soon as they got the all-clear from air traffic control. ETA unknown.

Electricity crackled through Tana’s body as she killed the call and dialed Zane immediately. Again, when the call connected, she wasted no time on preamble.

“This is Constable Larsson of Twin Rivers RCMP. I’m investigating a serious crime, and time is of the essence. I’ve been told that you know the name of the woman with whom Elliot Novak, ex-RCMP station commander, had an extramarital affair.”

A pause. “
Who
did you say you were?”

“Constable Tana Larsson, Twin Rivers RCMP.”

“That’s a long time ago. I . . . I’m afraid I was told in a professional capacity, and I can’t give out patient—”

“This is a criminal investigation, ma’am. Lives could be in jeopardy. I understand that you broke protocol in revealing the affair to another patient in the first place. It will make things a lot easier if you cooperate with me now.”

A longer pause. Tension crackled through Tana. Wind was starting to whip outside—the next front moving in.

Zane cleared her throat. “How can I be certain that you are who you say you are?”

Tana gave the woman her badge number. “You can call Yellowknife RCMP to verify, however, things are going to look a lot better for you professionally if you cooperate with me right now. You could cost lives.” And if the coming storm was as bad as the last one, Tana only had a narrow window in which she could be certain of communications.

The woman inhaled audibly on the other end of the line, then said, “Fine. Okay. Elliot’s wife believed that her husband was having an affair with a local helicopter pilot. I don’t even recall her name now, but—”

Tana didn’t let her finish. She killed the call, dialed Crash immediately. She needed help.

No answer.

She glanced out the dark window. It was frosting over, temperatures dropping fast with the temporary clearing of skies. It was going to be a very, very cold and windy night. Her gaze went to the dispatch setup on Rosalie’s desk. The public couldn’t call in, nor leave messages. Not until NorthTel came in to repair their satcom system. And it struck her suddenly—she’d been busy on the only phone available for hours with Yellowknife, replacing and recharging the batteries as she’d consumed juice.
If
Crash, or anyone else, had tried to call on this phone, it would have gone into some automated system. She checked the satellite phone, figured out how to get into the system. She dialed in, pressed the key, and there was one message.

Hurriedly, she connected with the message. Crash’s recorded voice came through.

“. . . Mindy went with Markus Van Bleek to Wolverine Falls two days ago. I think she’s in serious trouble, Tana. I can’t leave her out there. Markus might even be our guy. If I’m not back before Rosalie leaves,
please
get someone to come stay with you.”

Tana killed the call, rushed through to the interview room, found the statement she’d taken from Van Bleek, along with his contact details. He’d given her a satellite phone number. She called it, perspiration breaking out on her body as it rang.

“Markus here.”

“Van Bleek, it’s Constable Tana Larsson. Is Crash O’Halloran with you?”

“Jesus. What is it with everyone today? He was here earlier looking for that local kid. But he’s barking up the wrong tree. Heather took her.”

“When?”

“The other night. Two days ago. I was trying to give the kid a ride, and Heather stepped in like some white shining knight and whipped the kid away with her, all sanctimonious. Then she apparently told Crash
I
had taken her.”

“
Where
is Crash now?”

“Looking for the kid back at Heather’s place, I presume.”