In the Barren Ground (8 page)

CHAPTER 8

Tana checked her voice recorder and pinned the mic to her collar. It was easier to speak her observations out loud than to try writing them down with frozen fingers. She’d transcribe it all later. It was just after 8:15 a.m. and the sun was struggling like a pale lemon trapped behind glass to rise off the horizon. It wouldn’t get far. Its arc would only get shallower and shallower until it barely peeped over at all in late December.

A cold wind pushed through the valley, the sound crisp and sibilant on ice crystals that had grown on snow during the night. The breeze had cleared the skies and she’d managed to transmit a satellite call. She’d been told the coroner’s ETA was a few hours out. Her goal was now to document the scene while she waited.

She’d left Van Bleek at the cliff and climbed the opposite esker ridge. From up here she surveyed the scene below with a bird’s eye. In the stark light of dawn, the carnage was surreal.

On the cliff ridge opposite her, above Van Bleek, stood an inukshuk. These stone figures were common throughout the tundra. One arm of the inuk was usually created longer than the other, and it would point travelers in the direction they should go, either to find water, or a mountain pass, that kind of thing. Nothing weird there. She took a photo anyway, in an attempt to capture the whole scene. She snapped a couple of the cliff, then of the slaughter below. Wolves lay in a sea of churned-up red and pink snow that was littered with bits of meat, viscera, clothing. Apodaca’s head.

Apodaca’s and Sanjit’s bodies were lumps under tarps inside the electric fences. She captured it all, checked her watch, activated her mic. She stated time and weather conditions, and that she was present at the scene with Markus Van Bleek. In bullet point fashion she detailed how they’d arrived, how they’d killed the wolves, and what measures she’d taken to protect the scene.

“There are nine dead wolves,” she said. “Five were shot by myself and Van Bleek around 11:40 p.m., Sunday, November fourth. According to Van Bleek, four were killed by himself and WestMin employee Teevak Kino earlier on Sunday afternoon. Kino was not present at the WestMin camp when I arrived on Sunday night. Boreal Air pilot Heather MacAllistair witnessed four wolves feeding on the victims when she attempted to pick them up on Sunday before 1:00 pm. She believed the wolves could have been the same four that the team saw moving north along the lake shore when she’d flown her clients in on Friday morning.”

Tana paused, then added for her own reference. “MacAllistair also apparently saw a red AeroStar helicopter on the other side of the cliff around lunchtime on Friday, before the storm and fog moved in. She believed it belonged to pilot Cameron ‘Crash’ O’Halloran.” She made a mental note to follow up.

Tana studied the scene, trying to develop a mental picture of what had happened.

She imagined the biologists being dropped off not far north of this point. She pictured them working their way to this valley, then the fog and snow moving in. She noted there was no sign from up here that a tent had been erected.

Tana activated her mic again. “There is no immediate evidence that the victims had set up camp for the night. This could mean the attack occurred some time before nightfall on Friday, November second. The animal predation is extensive, and would appear to support that timeline.”

She clicked one more photo, then made her way slowly down the ridge.

She stopped at a trail of grizzly bear prints still evident under a fine layer of newer snow that dusted them. Massive bear. Claws as long as her middle finger. The prints led right into the kill area. Some of the grizz prints were atop wolf prints. Others had been covered by canine prints. She was unable to tell which animals had come first, especially given the very fine layer of snow that dusted the trace. She laid a small forensics ruler in the snow beside the tracks, and photographed them. She also documented the various boot prints.

Working in a concentric circle, meticulously recording and photographing as she went, she gradually made her way inward toward ground zero—the bodies. Something made her look up, a sense of being watched—with intent. By the eyes of something hungry. Her gaze went to the cliff, to Van Bleek.

He was regarding her. Still as a stone statue. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

The man unsettled her on some very primitive level. Even so, she was grateful for his help. Without him, she would not have gotten in here. There’d have been nothing left of these kids at all.

Tana moved in closer to the bodies, and came to where she’d thrown up. Shame washed through her. She’d fucked up again, gotten her DNA all over the scene. She swallowed her distaste and photographed what she’d done, the words of her old instructor going through her mind—
take pictures of everything, and I mean everything, no matter your thoughts. Something seemingly irrelevant could become important after the fact. In court. Lawyers will pick you apart
. . .

A raven cawed. Tana glanced up. A giant gleaming black bird had perched itself on the outstretched arm of the inukshuk, something long dangling from its beak. She took her field binoculars from her belt, zeroed in on the bird. A ribbon of pale meat flapped from the bird’s beak. As she watched, a gunshot cracked the air in the valley. Shock rippled through her body. The feathers exploded from the bird, and it tumbled down dead to the ground.

She lowered her binoculars, heart thumping. Van Bleek stood under the cliff, gun still raised.

“What in the hell did you do that for?” she yelled.

Slowly, he brought his rifle to waist level, and reseated himself on his rock. He glared at her.

Sweat prickled over her body. She glanced at her watch, willing the sound of a chopper to appear in the distance.

Focus. He’s not going to shoot a cop . . . you’re just getting twitchy . . .

Tana re-centered on her task. She snapped photos of the shredded blue woolen hat with the ripped-out eyeball congealing to the fabric, and then she crouched down to get a better look. Clumps of scalp and long strawberry blonde hair also stuck to the wool. Selena Apodaca’s eye, hair. Tana’s gaze followed drag marks, prints, what looked like arterial spurt, toward the hump under the blue tarp. Near the hump lay a shotgun in red snow amongst bits of backpacks, a bloodied boot, shredded clothing, plastic, a can of bear spray. And two ripped jerry cans with black stuff on them. The black contents also stained snow around the cans.

What happened here, girl? You were attacked by what? Bear? Or circled by wolves coming in closer for nips as you tried to fight them back? You were still alive—your heart still pumping when your blood spurted like that. Did the animals drag you down, tear at you from all directions as they fought for your flesh while you were still clinging to life?

Tana photographed the weapon, then examined it. Twelve gauge, Mossberg 500A. One round in the chamber, two in the mag. No sign the gun had been fired. She thought of herself last night, those orange eyes staring at her through the fog. Judging by the height of the eyes from the ground and the distance between them, she was pretty sure it had been a big bear. And if it had charged from that distance, she would probably be dead, but she would have fired as it came at her. So what happened here? Something took the biologists by surprise? If the unarmed victim had been attacked first, the other could have fired. Into the air, at least. Perhaps the biologist carrying the weapon was attacked first. Perhaps they’d frozen in fear.

Tana turned in a slow circle, a dark feeling leaking into her. Everywhere wolf tracks crisscrossed big-ass brown bear prints through blood. And then there were the human tracks. She’d need to take a record of Van Bleek’s and Kino’s boot treads for her report. And her own. And Apodaca’s and Sanjit’s.

She moved to the decapitated head. Closing her eyes for a second to force her mind into gear, she then photographed it, before getting down to examine it more closely. Tana adjusted her crouching position slightly to ease the irritating pinch of her bulletproof vest under her jacket.

Reengaging her mic, she cleared her throat and said, “The head has been chewed, and ripped off the female victim’s body. It’s lying about three meters out from the torso. Face down. The tissue at the neck is ragged. It looks as though part of the spinal column is crushed.” She cleared her throat again. “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.” With a gloved hand, Tana turned the head over, and reeled back.

Her breathing turned rapid. “Down the side of the face are four deep symmetric gouges, or rips. Like a claw mark. The right cheek is . . . has . . . been eaten, and the right cheekbone is crushed. The . . .” She paused, wiped her brow with the back of her sleeve. The teeth grimaced at her like those of a skeleton with no soft tissue to make it seem human. “The right brow bone has been crushed inward. Both eyes are missing.”

Just bloody, dark sockets.

Tana stared at the head, once Selena, now grinning sightlessly up at the pearlescent sky. It was unnerving. We were biologically programmed to respond to the emotions in the face of another person, she thought. A smile could be contagious. Grief in the features of another was the same—we could physically feel it. Watching someone cry could make us cry, too. Without the soft tissues of the lips, the expression of the eyes, the essence of what had once made Selena Apodaca human was gone. Tana’s thoughts turned to the victim’s parents. Family. Friends. Her jaw tightened. She looked away for a moment and sucked in a deep breath of air, thankful for the frigid wind. It helped her breathe without taking in the smell of meat.

Once she’d gathered herself, Tana made her way over to the live electric fence around Raj Sanjit’s body. After taking photos of the snow-covered tarp, she disconnected the batteries and climbed over the wire. Tana drew back the tarp, and shock whipped through her.

THE HUNGER

For, in the Barrens of the soul,

monsters take toll . . .

With bloodstained fingers the Reader caresses, oh so gently, the printed words of the poem at the beginning of
The Hunger
. It is night. Candles flicker on either side of the new jar where a fresh eye swims in red liquid. It was such a pretty eye when alive. Sort of mossy green.

A fire burns fierce in the kiln-like stove. The room is a cavern, a dark sweat lodge. Hot.

The Reader sits naked.

The Reader is sated.

For in the Reader’s belly is roast heart.

A treat.

For the Reader’s birthday. The second of November. A time to lure. The cur. When winter does stir . . . and how perfect that Nature’s Gods shined on the exact same day this cycle around. Usually it would be thereabouts. The closest window to the day the Reader was born, ripped from a mother’s womb, destroying that which had given birth in the process. Death-Life. Hand-in-hand. A yin and yang . . .