In the Barren Ground (15 page)

. . . ice, where once there was heart . . .

A chill washed over Tana’s skin. She felt a sense of distant drums, of stories told around campfires in the camp where her grandmother had lived. Stories her father had related out in the wilds—myths he said he’d learned from native elders.

“Can I keep this?” Tana asked.

“I guess.”

Tana said, gently. “And the photo of Raj and Selena?”

Veronique pulled one up on her phone and showed Tana a pretty, freckled young woman with long, wavy, strawberry-blonde hair. Striking green eyes. With her was a lean, tawny-complexioned male. Tall. Glistening black hair. Liquid black gaze.

“Raj and Selena,” said Veronique.

There was no resemblance in these faces to the mess of blood and gore Tana had seen at the north end of Ice Lake, apart from skin tone and hair color.

“I’d like a copy of this.”

“I’ll forward it to you. What address?”

CHAPTER 18

“No one was to blame,” Dean Kaminsky said as he scratched his Lab behind the ear. His dog leaned into his touch.

“Those wolves . . .” He struggled, to his credit. “It’s a wild act. Nature. We forget that we humans are encroaching into their space. I heard some guys at the Red Moose last night saying that it was evil. It wasn’t. We shouldn’t make value judgments.”

Tana glanced up from her notebook. “You were at the Moose last night?”

“After the fight. For a bit, before Viktor came and cleared us all out.”

“Veronique was there, too?”

“Just me. I needed a beer. I . . . I just needed—”

“To ease those sorrows, eh?”

His mouth tightened.

“You wanted to shoot them at the time—those wolves.”

Heat rose into his face above the beard. He shuffled, ever so slightly, on the bunk where he was seated.

Then, as if having decided to draw his student philosophical line in the snow and test the strength of it, he came to his feet, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and squared his shoulders. “If you’re done with the questions?”

She stood, too, in order not to be at a spatial disadvantage. On her feet, Tana was maybe an inch or two taller than Dean Kaminsky, but what he lacked in height he made up in understated muscular power and breadth of shoulder. Long, strong arms. Prominent brow, pale eyes sunken deep and safely protected in hard bone caves. Low center of gravity. The kind of guy built to take a punch, and give one.

“Two more questions,” she said.

He kept his hands in his pockets, his gaze locked on hers.

“The lure that Raj and Selena worked with, what was it made of, and where did they get it?”

“Mixed it themselves. On Crow TwoDove’s property—the father of the guy Selena was banging. Crow supplied the guts and blood and stuff from his taxidermy business. Tchliko Lodge brings him the kills from their hunts, if clients want an animal stuffed. He scrapes out the insides, keeps it in barrels in a shed on his farm for Selena and Raj.”

“So they mixed the lure primarily from animal guts and blood.”

“Rotted blood. Fish, too. Added some vanilla.”

“It wasn’t easier to use a commercial hunting lure?”

“Expensive, and chemical. This stuff was available. It’s not uncommon to make bear lure from what’s around.”

“It was kept in a secured shed?”

“Sealed drums. Corrugated, galvanized steel shed. Locked. They did their best to ensure it wasn’t attracting animals out there.”

Tana closed her notebook, and took in the state of Dean’s room—his unpacked clothes littering the beds, rifle propped against the wall, boxes of ammo, a hunting bow. Paperback novel lying on the end of his bed.

“You were okay with Selena ‘banging’ Jamie TwoDove?”

His eyes widened momentarily. Heat burned red across his cheekbones. “Selena’s sex life was not my business.”

“Yet you raised it.”

Silence.

Tana paused, thinking it was irrelevant to the wildlife attack, but, curious, she tested Dean anyway. “What did you feel about Selena’s claims that she was being stalked?”

He glanced away for a moment. Then said, “She could be imaginative. Liked to see drama where there was none. Attention seeker.”

Tana nodded, noting the cover of the paperback on his bed—looked like a horror novel—blood on snow, big prints leading into dark woods. It was titled
The Hunger
.

“Reading for your trip home?” She tilted her chin toward the book.

“Not going back right away.”

“I thought you’d checked out of the motel.”

Defiance crackled in his eyes, in his posture. “I’m not going to let this beat me. I’m not running home. I’m not due back for classes for another two weeks.”

“What about Raj’s and Selena’s parents? Veronique said you guys were going to meet them in Edmonton.”

“Veronique is going. She was closer to both Selena and Raj. I’m packing Raj’s things for her to take. Then I’m going to stay a fortnight with a friend up at Wolverine Falls, do some hunting. And once I’ve completed my doctorate, I’m coming back out here.”

“As in, to live?”

“I like it up north. I’d like to make my life here, yes.”

Tana weighed him for a moment—a guy with issues. Defensive. “So, if I need you, I’ll find you up at Wolverine Falls. Who are you staying with there?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“The fact that you’re reluctant to cooperate inclines me to make it my business.”

“Guy’s name is Harvey Black Dog.”

Tana noted the name, thanked Dean, and took her leave. As she came down the stairs and reached her ATV, she whistled for her dogs, who came bounding up through hoarfrosted stalks of deciduous scrub. She donned her helmet, careful not to pull at the stitches and bruising along her cheekbone. Firing up her quad, she made for the trail along the river that would take her to O’Halloran’s place. She needed an official statement from him about the red AeroStar helicopter seen near the attack site on Friday afternoon.

It was that in-between time when the snow was too sparse for snowmobiles, yet still navigable with an ATV. She’d chosen the four-wheeler this morning so that her dogs could run behind her, and she picked up speed along the water. The morning sun sparkled on ice crystals and painted the river pearlescent pinks and orange. Her dogs chased in her wake, tongues lolling, doggie breath smoking in the cold.

Now those—thought Tana as ice crystals sparked tiny rainbows everywhere—those were the true gems of the north. Diamonds of weather. Precious and rare as the fleeting rays of the sun. There for all, but no one could own them.

She gave her machine juice, sliding and bumping and bashing upriver alongside the chuckling water, and glee filled her heart.

This, baby,
this
is why we came here . . . we’re going to get more of this. Open skies, natural jewels, a place where the dogs can run free . . . we’re going to make this work . . .

O’Halloran’s yellow-and-burgundy plane was parked near the hangar.

Tana drew up outside his house next door to the airstrip, and banged on the door. A sheer in the window shifted. Then the door opened. Tana’s heart took a plunge.

Mindy. Sleep-mussed. Swollen-looking lips and bleary eyes. She wore an oversize men’s flannel pajama top, nothing else from what Tana could see. And she stank of booze. Christ. Memories slammed through Tana’s brain. Guilt. Shame. Remorse. Rage. It boiled into a complex, fucking black cloud she seemed forever unable to outrun. Even here. How many rides along the river with her dogs would it take until she felt free?

The kid eyed Tana in silent hostility.

“Is O’Halloran in?”

“No.”

Irritation snapped through her. “Do you know where I can find him?”

“What do you want him for?”

“I need to ask him some questions.”

“About me?”

“No.”

The look in Mindy’s eyes was almost disappointment, then they hardened. “He went with that pilot slut he likes to screw, Heather MacAllistair, to Freak Farm. Bet they’re banging away like rabbits right now.”

Tana’s pulse kicked. She hadn’t seen that coming.

“What’s ‘Freak Farm’?” she said.

Mindy rolled her eyes, as if to say, “loser cop.” “That’s what everyone calls the taxidermist place,” she said.

“Crow TwoDove’s?”

Mindy shrugged, started to close the door.

“Wait.” Tana halted the door with a gloved hand. “Mindy, if you ever need to talk—”

“I sure wouldn’t talk to you.”

“Look, I’ve been where you are. I know—”

“You know
dickshit
!” she said. Tana blinked.

“I’ll tell you what I
do
know, Mindy. You’re fourteen—”

“Fifteen next month.”

“And you’re living with a man old enough to be your father. And if he’s sleeping with you—”

“Like I said, you know
fuck jackshit
. Loser.” She shoved the door closed in Tana’s face.

Tana stood there, hands fisting at her sides. Her heart pounded. Anger roiled in her blood, heating her cheeks. Anger at so much more than just what was here in front of her now. Choices. Mistakes. People who’d never helped her when they could have. She wanted to bash down that damn door, haul Mindy Koe out of there, take her somewhere safe, get her into a program. Obliterate her own past. She wanted to physically
hurt
the men who took advantage of women, and children. And in this instant she hated O’Halloran more than she could say. She stomped to her quad where her dogs waited.

Bastard. You sick-shit bastard. Who in this town have you
not
screwed? Older meat not fresh enough for you that you must seduce underage teens with booze and God knows what other narcotics you feed the people in this lost and forgotten town . . . your illegal liquor nearly killed a nine-year-old boy, you bastard . . .

She straddled and gunned her machine, riding too fast along the forest road that would take her to Crow TwoDove’s spread, slipping dangerously on ice, adrenaline powering her blood. Her dogs raced to keep up, falling farther and farther behind.

Several blood-pumping miles later, Tana drew up outside the entrance to TwoDove’s, breathing heavily. She killed her engine, and studied the place as she waited for her hounds to catch up.

Rough-hewn poles formed a square arch over a long, rutted, snow-covered driveway that led down to a squat log cabin under a listing roof. At the top of the arch, bang in the center, hung the heavy skull of a bison. Beside it on either side wind chimes crafted with what looked like bleached hyoid bones swirled slowly in the ice breeze.

A covered porch filled with junk skirted the log cabin. At the base of the stairs leading up to the porch, a thin husky-type dog lunged and barked against a rope. Smoke curled from the chimney. No vehicles out front. Off to the right-hand side, on land that led down to the river, several barns and outbuildings canted in varying stages of disrepair along with abandoned-looking trucks and an old tractor.

Tana used the moment to simmer her anger down. Her temper was an issue—they’d told her that when she’d started training at Depot Division in Saskatchewan to become a Mountie—something she’d need to work on. She forced herself to breathe deep, and to focus on why she was here: to find O’Halloran, ask him about the red chopper. And since she’d come this way, she’d check out where and how Apodaca and Sanjit had mixed their lure. The attractant likely played a key role in drawing in carnivores, and in leading to the attack. And if Jamie was on-site, she’d tell him that she’d spoken to Viktor, and that they needed to arrange a gathering of the community affected by his actions at the Red Moose.

The Mindy Koe–O’Halloran issue . . . she’d find a way to bite into that later.

Her dogs caught up to her, panting and happy. She dismounted her quad, took their leads from a box on the back. She clipped the leashes to Max’s and Toyon’s collars.

“You guys need to wait here,” she told her dogs as she secured their leads to her quad. “I don’t want you coming after me, because that mean-looking ol’ husky-wolf down there—this is his place.” Poor bastard. “We don’t want to mess in his sandbox, okay?”

Dogs secured, Tana walked slowly down the driveway, or what passed for one. The husky yipped and yapped and growled, choking itself against the rope. As she neared the house, the dog fell suddenly silent and slinked under the deck. Awareness prickled down the back of her neck. She slowed, her right hand going instinctively toward her sidearm. She was being watched. Felt it. Tana took in her surroundings carefully. Wraiths of mist sifted up from the river, snaking around the old barn to her right, curling and caressing the derelict, rusting vehicles. A bent willow rocker stood silent near the front door, which was behind a weather screen. Crows beaded the arms of a totem pole that had been constructed to the left of the cabin.

If this was the place of a great taxidermist, she’d bet her life that the Tchliko Lodge owner never actually brought his clients out here. Tana moved closer, caught sight of a little inukshuk garden in the snow in front of the porch. Her pulse quickened. She told herself it meant nothing. Garden gnomes, northern style. She was being unnaturally jumpy.

Wind chimes tinkled suddenly, and a gunshot blasted the air. Birds scattered off the roof of the barn, filling the sky like swirling black harpies.

Tana froze. Her heart thudded.

A man became distinct from the shadows on the porch. Another shot boomed.

The slug whirred past her face. Tana sucked in air sharply. Heart racing. Her baby rolled in her stomach—
she felt her baby.
She swallowed, eyes burning.

You might be compelled to take a kick, or a bullet, but you’ve got another life to think about . . .

Slowly she raised her hands out from her sides.

“It’s okay,” she yelled. “I mean no harm.”

The porch creaked. A man with long black hair streaked with gray emerged into her line of vision. He reloaded his shotgun, put stock to shoulder, and aimed the muzzle straight at her heart.

“Trespassers ain’t welcome here, Constable. Back off nice and slow, and get the fuck off my land.”