In the Barren Ground (29 page)

“Where did you hunt?” she said.

“North of Headless Man.”

“How did you get there?”

“Chopper. Like that one there.” He pointed to a photograph on an antique-looking, black wood dresser. “We use a local pilot.”

She walked over to the set of photographs, leaned closer. “What kind of helicopter is this?” she said.

“AS355 Eurocopter Twin Squirrel,” said Sturmann-Taylor. “Six seater. One of Boreal Air’s.”

Tana studied the other photos—groups of hunters on excursions. Sturmann-Taylor with various women. Another picture showed a laughing group in camo gear with guns, arms around each other’s shoulders. At their feet sprawled a dead grizzly. Sturmann-Taylor’s boot rested on the grizz’s head. With him was Henry Spatt, Markus Van Bleek, Harry Blundt, and Heather MacAllistair, who must have been their Boreal Air pilot.

“And where was this one taken?” she asked, gesturing to the picture.

“That one?” Sturmann-Taylor said, coming to her side. “Nehako Valley. Grizzly bear hunt.”

Tana’s pulse gave a kick.

Nehako—where Alexa Peters had said the body of a Kelowna geologist had been found scavenged.

“Oh, that was just a fabulous trip,” Spatt said, coming over. “I have an even better photograph than that one.” He whipped out his wallet, and flipped through it. “Here,” he said proudly. “One with the brown bear that I bagged with a bow, moreover.”

Tana took the image from him, and her heart slowed to an erratic beat. There was an extra member of the hunting party in this photo. Trying to keep her voice level, and without looking up, she said, “Impressive. Did you hunt often with this particular group, Mr. Spatt?” Her voice came out tight, and she heard it. In her peripheral vision she saw Crash glance her way suddenly. He’d heard it, too. Which meant Sturmann-Taylor and Spatt had probably noticed as well.

Be careful what you say now, Tana . . .

“On more than one occasion, yes. That particular hunt was November three years ago, wasn’t it, Alan?”

The geologist went missing three years ago . . .

She glanced up. Sturmann-Taylor’s features had gone hard. His eyes were narrowed, sharp, assessing, like a predator. And she knew she was not supposed to have seen this photo. With this extra man in it.

The library door opened, saving her. “Charlie is awaiting you in the sunroom, ma’am. I’ll show you the way,” said the manservant.

CHAPTER 34

On a table in the sunroom, Tana laid out the photographs of the Apodaca-Sanjit attack aftermath that she’d brought for Charlie. “What I’m interested in, is does this look like a wolf or bear kill to you—is this pattern of animal predation something you’ve seen before in the wild?”

Charlie’s long braids swung forward as he bent to study the photos. He smelled of sage and wood smoke. Tana had apologized for the subject matter, but he’d said he was okay to examine the photos she’d taken at the scene. She’d also brought for him images from the Dakota Smithers and Regan Novak autopsies.

His face went dark. The air around him seemed to grow thick. He took his time. Then his hand went slowly up to the jade talisman he always wore on a thong around his neck. It was to ward off evil, he’d once told Tana. The evil of lonely places. And his brown, gnarled hand curled around it.

“Not wolves,” he said in his husky voice. “Not bear. Maybe they come later, but something was there before.”

A chill ran down Tana’s back.

“What makes you say this?” she said.

“They don’t do it like this.”

“But they
could
have?”

He shook his head.

“Has anyone asked for your input on the Dakota Smithers and Regan Novak attacks before?”

“No one. I never saw the sites where these kids were killed, either. I never saw
this
.” He was silent for a long while as he studied the glossy black-and-whites. Then his old, rheumy eyes looked up and met hers—eyes that had witnessed many things over many years. Eyes that had absorbed the wisdom and mysteries of the wild. “You saved my nephew, Tana. Now I must save you.” He paused. “Leave this alone.”

She weighed him for a moment, unease growing in her chest.

“That author, Henry Spatt, said it was you, Charlie, who told him about the legends of a spirit-beast who kills and rips apart women, and who takes their hearts and their eyes.”

His face blackened to thunder. His eyes changed. An energy surged about him that she’d not experienced in his usually calm presence. Lights almost seemed to dim inside the room. “It is the way of our culture to tell the old stories. I did not know he would put it in a book.”

“It angers you?”

“It is for oral history. It is to be spoken around fires in the night. It is to be interpreted by the listener—a conversation between the storyteller and the listener. The stories are to stay out here in the north, in the wild, where the spirits of our forefathers can hear, also, and so can the wind.” He shook his head in disgust, and walked toward the door, fringes of his brown leather coat swinging.

“Charlie,” she called after him.

He stopped, turned.

“It’s possible that someone could be trying to act out this legend, or the story, as it’s told in Henry’s book. You are out there in the bush all the time—do you have any idea who it might be?”

“There are things out in the bush that do not make sense in books,” he said. “But they are real.” He paused. “Do not anger this spirit, Tana. Do not let it inside you.” He formed a fist and beat it once, hard, against his chest. “It turns the heart to ice.”

Dinner was held in a room named Wolf Hall. Or, the word “staged” might be more appropriate, thought Tana as she glanced up at the words engraved on a plaque above the door. Sturmann-Taylor followed her gaze.

“Each room in the lodge is named after a wild animal,” he explained with a sharp smile. “This one is for the noble wolf. And I do like the historical allusions to Wolfhall, or Wulfhall, the name of the manor from whence came the third wife of Henry the Eighth, Jane Seymour. It’s also the title of a fabulous fictionalized account of the time. Please, enter.” He held out his hand, showing them in. “And of course, the psychology of the king himself is riveting.”

The room was paneled with dark wood, and a long, narrow table ran down the middle. The table was adorned with crystal goblets, sparkling silver cutlery, white china, linen napkins. Candles in several pewter candelabras provided most of the light in the room, and the glow quavered and shimmered and danced off the silverware, the crystal, and it flickered in the glass eyes of the beast heads mounted on the walls. A fire also burned softly in a stone hearth at the far end of the table.

Who in their right mind wanted dead animals watching them eat?

“Some of Crow TwoDove’s work, I presume,” Tana said, nodding to the stuffed heads.

“Yes,” Sturmann-Taylor said. He pulled out a high-backed chair for her, seating her beside fat Henry Spatt. “Crow is by far the finest taxidermist I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. A true artiste. We had him out to the lodge earlier in the season to do a demonstration and workshop for some of our guests. It went very well. We’ve started bringing in equipment, and have set up a facility for him here. We’d love to have him on site permanently, or at least for a good part of each year. Henry was among our first taxidermy workshop guinea pigs. Went well, didn’t it, Henry?”

“Delightful!” Henry reached across the table and clasped a bottle of red wine. He began glugging its contents into his goblet. “Markus thought so, too.” He took an immediate swig from his glass, and sighed with pleasure.

“Equipment?” Tana said, “As in taxidermy tools?” She thought about the tool skewering the deer eyeball to her door, and how Spatt had been in town with Van Bleek at the time.

Crash was shown the seat across the table from her. His eyes caught hers for an instant. His face was tight. It was clearly eating him to know what she’d seen in Spatt’s wallet photo. Eating her, too. She needed to get through dinner and find some time on her own to process it.

“Yes,” Sturmann-Taylor said, seating himself at the head of the table, and flicking out his linen napkin. He placed it on his lap and nodded for the server standing quietly at his side to pour wine into the remaining empty glasses. “We had a special outbuilding built to Crow’s specs. Far superior-looking to that beastly place he has in Twin Rivers. And much better suited to meeting the taxidermy needs of my clients out here. And while he is on site, we can . . . how shall we say . . . massage his style a little.” Again, a fast flash of that wolfish grin.

An array of appetizers was brought in by silent staff. More wine was poured. Cutlery chinked as they ate, and Spatt drank copiously, becoming more loquacious with each goblet full of fine Burgundy.

“Must be fascinating to be a Mountie,” he breathed onto Tana. “An investigator of homicide and all that.”

She eyed him, wondering if he could be capable of the murders, the bloody violence. He’d been in town for each one. He had opportunity. He knew the scenarios in his book intimately—he’d created them. Could he be trying to bring them alive? To relive that rush of success he’d had with that first Cromwell book, and had not managed to replicate since? Was
this
why he came out here annually—for a human hunt?

Was she dining arm to arm with a demented killer?

Crash spoke very little throughout the meal. He was posing simply as her guide.

Sturmann-Taylor was intently observant, assessing them all in turn. Tana was besieged by the sense they were his minions, his toys in a psychological game, and that he’d brought them into this room to eat dead meat while the dead heads of animals watched them as some sort of test.

“I mean—” Spatt leaned toward her, his meaty, alcohol breath washing hot over her face. Her stomach recoiled, and she concentrated fiercely on breathing shallowly. She did not need to embarrass herself by fleeing for the bathroom right now. Spatt continued, “Murder, and the legal process that follows, it’s a kind of theatre, don’t you think? A theatre of the macabre.”

Like this room. This lodge. This opulent malevolence.

Outside, the storm howled as it intensified. Wind gusted down the chimney, and the flames darted while candles shivered.

“It’s no wonder we are all drawn to murder in so many ways,” said Spatt. “It throws under a spotlight the pathologies of our communities. It forces us to examine elements of our society, and in ourselves, that we try to ignore: deviance, violence, anger, hatred, frustration, malevolence, greed, mental illness, cruelty. It’s why we write about it, I think. We create fictional monsters, so that we can examine these abhorrences as something quite apart from ourselves. Because if we didn’t have this outlet, we’d be forced to look into the mirror, and see the eyes of a beast looking back.”

Tana glanced at Crash. He was staring hard at Spatt. Her mind returned to the photographs of Spatt on the mantel in the library. Like so many outdoor enthusiasts in the north, he’d been wearing Baffin-Arctic boots in those photos. She’d judged his feet to be around a size nine. When she and Crash had arrived at the lodge, the butler had taken their wet gear into a mudroom off the entrance hall. Perhaps Spatt’s boots were drying in the mudroom with the others.

Plates were removed and main courses were arranged in front of them. More drinks were poured. Tana declined the wine each time, but exhaustion was beginning to weigh a heavy mantle over her nevertheless. She needed to persevere for one more course, and then she could respectably excuse herself and head for her room, possibly via the mudroom to check out Spatt’s boot soles. And she wanted to read more of his novel, and think about the implications of what she’d seen in his wallet photo. Plus they had a very early start planned for tomorrow, and a challenging ride ahead into the badlands.

“And the way we police our crimes,” Spatt was saying, “reveals the true authority of a government. It demonstrates the ultimate power it holds over the lives of its citizens. It’s why the early Canadian governments sent mounted police proudly riding into the wild, wild west—to stake a sense of ownership and control over the untamed land, and subdue the natives.”

Tana’s mind went to Crow TwoDove, and his hatred for cops. Her gran had once told her that the old Dene word for police meant “the takers away of people.” She made a personal vow. She was going to change that deep-seated cultural view in her own small way, right there in Twin Rivers. Cooperative policing. Communication. She’d already started by convincing Viktor Baroshkov to work with Jamie TwoDove on reparation for the damage at the Red Moose. And she’d broached Chief Dupp Peters on the subject of auxiliaries. She knew this philosophy was already well touted by her federal force. But whether she’d personally get cooperation from brass at a micro level was another matter.

“Why a wendigo creature in your book?” Crash said suddenly.

“Hah!” said Spatt. “Because it cuts to the true ‘heart of darkness’ trope—the idea that if a traveler ventures into wilderness, and if he goes too deep, too dark, for too long, he will be touched by that which is uncivilized, untamable. And he will return a profoundly changed man with some of the wild inside him. He has, in effect, become ‘The Beast’ himself. It’s a common enough metaphor that is retold in many ways. You even see echoes of it in vampire lore. The creature bites you, and you become a vampire. The zombie infects you, and you become a zombie. It’s essentially a trip down into the wild Jungian basement of the human soul, for down there is where the dark jungle really thrives, and where your own monsters are buried.”

Tana set her glass down, thinking of Crash, how he’d ventured undercover into the dark world of organized crime and returned a changed man, with perhaps a touch of the underworld beast himself. “It’s been a fascinating conversation, and delicious meal, thank you,” she said as she folded her napkin and laid it beside her plate. “If you don’t mind, I need to call it a day.” She got to her feet, feeling dizzy suddenly, and she braced for balance on the back of her chair.

Sturmann-Taylor came instantly to his feet. “And thank
you
for the company, Constable. My butler will show you to your room.” He eyed Crash. “I’ve placed you two side by side.”

Crash met Sturmann-Taylor’s gaze coolly. He was being tested. He simply nodded.

Nerves and a tentacle of tension followed Tana out of the room and down the corridor. The butler led the way, a silent shadow through the stone-tiled halls. She wasn’t going to get a chance to slip into the mudroom without him.

If she wanted to see Spatt’s boots, she was going to have to ask Spatt directly.