Not only had sensitivity training skipped Reed, but his suggestion to forget about the trash also bordered on blackmail. Right now, Avery wasn’t inclined to trust either of his colleagues. “Got it. Now, about the dead fox at Hannah—”
“Would you stop and think for a moment?” Reed thundered before pulling away. “Didn’t you say you didn’t find any tracks? The damn fox didn’t just appear out of thin air.” Visibly exasperated, he began pacing in front of the stove, wearing out his shoes and the floor. “Parker is a trapper. She learned it from her old man. Add one plus one, would you, and try to come up with two.”
Someone could have easily ventured around Hannah’s cabin while riding in the tracks she’d made earlier with her own snowmobile. “Is that an order or just advice?”
“Don’t be a smartass like Abbott, and don’t go risking what’s left of your pitiful career for a floozy like Foxy or a liar like Parker.”
How nice of Reed to care about my career.
“May I ask what makes you think Hannah Parker is lying?”
“She’s gotten to you, hasn’t she?” Without further explanation, the older Mountie dashed inside his office, only to return a few minutes later with a folder that he slapped on top of Foxy’s accident report. “I did some digging on Parker after she received the first note. You may want to read this before buying everything that exits her pretty mouth.”
***
It always amazed Hannah to see the difference forty-eight hours could make. The fever was gone, and Rory had regained most of his energy and appetite, even though he still favored ice cream over vegetables.
“Ready?”
Big blue eyes sparkled with glee and an ingenuous smile embedded cute dimples on his rosy cheeks. She kissed to top of his nose, then lowered his visor. From the time Rory had been old enough to sit, he’d enjoyed riding in the woods on a snowmobile. By next winter, his legs should be long enough to go snowshoeing with her. She looked forward to those new memories waiting on the horizon. His small mitts gripped the back of her winter coat. If Rory needed something he knew to tug.
She turned on the ignition and headed for the bridge.
In the last two days, the threatening notes and the fox had haunted her every waking moment, even spilling into her dreams. This morning, she’d made a short trip into town to get some food. At the entrance of the grocery store was a huge board where residents pinned ads, selling anything from trucks to baby clothes. She’d read all of them, forty-six handwritten cards, and seen none with the distinctive
Bs
or
Ps
, but she wasn’t giving up.
At the arena, there was an even bigger bulletin board affixed to the wall near the dressing rooms, but she had yet to check it out. On her next visit, she would remedy the situation.
With that plan in place, her mind traveled back to the first note she’d received shortly after Brent’s disappearance.
There was no telling how long he’d been dead. Whoever tried to scare her away might not have wanted her to venture near the bridge and stumble prematurely onto his body. If this was the reason behind the notes, then someone had gone through a great length of trouble to keep Brent’s death a secret. The far-fetched scenario invoked cover-up, possibly murder.
Eleven months of undercover investigation had taught Hannah nothing was impossible. Lives could be bought, sold, or terminated for a few grams of tainted drugs. The shocking evidence she’d gathered under a false identity had saved dozens of lives, but it pained her to remember she’d almost compromised the case by reporting the sexual assault. As soon as she realized her mistake, Hannah had retracted her accusations, inadvertently damaging her credibility in the volte-face. When she was arrested for prostitution a week later, her reputation had suffered another blow. About to be fired, she’d quit Child Welfare Services to protect her cover and lived in a shelter until they wrapped up the investigation. Gramp’s declining health had given her an excuse to come home and a chance to rebuild her shattered life, but the irony had never washed away.
Rory’s birth had grounded her, given her purpose. Even though she’d been relegated to a clerical position at work, the stains on her record hadn’t dimmed her ability to carry a good investigation. The possible connection between Brent’s death and the threatening notes leapt at her, like a starving wolf stumbling onto an injured fawn.
How could I have missed it?
But back then, she hadn’t known Brent had been buried not too far from the cabin.
The bridge loomed closer, a series of logs tied together with leather straps that were stronger than the rusty nails securing the remaining handrail. An ominous landmark lost in the wilderness.
She stopped the snowmobile on the bank, freed Rory from his harness, and removed both their helmets. “Want to go for a walk?”
The pom-pom on his tuque bobbed up and down. He hopped in the snow like a jackrabbit.
“Come on, Munchkin.” His hand firmly tucked into hers, she pulled him along, watching closely for signs of fear or apprehension. When Rory didn’t display any negative emotions, she heaved a sigh of relief. The bridge didn’t seem to hold any significance for him. He hadn’t seen the body, and she commended herself for not screaming when she’d dug up Brent.
Reaching the bridge, she stopped near its entrance where a narrow crevasse had opened in the snow. “Let’s wait a second here, okay?”
In her mind she recalled the dreadful discovery. The blurry image of Brent and his snowmobile slowly merged with the winter scenery.
Except for the tip of a ski sticking upward, the snowmobile had been buried under five to six feet of snow. It was logical to assume that Brent had crashed early in the winter, before Mother Nature’s wrath blanketed the woods.
“Let’s go see if the ice is melting. Maybe we’ll see some fish.” Not to frighten or alarm her son, she made it sound like a game when in reality she wanted to have a closer look at the crash site.
Rory took a few steps and sank down to his thighs. Silent laughter shook his snowsuit and rocked his shoulders as he tugged on her arm.
“Are you stuck?”
His lips parted, and for a hopeful second, it looked like he would mouth
yes
, but they pressed together before he formed any words. Instead, he extended his arms.
“Carry you?” She picked him up, and he wrapped his arms around her neck. “You know you’re getting heavy.” Soft alpaca wool brushed her cheek as he cuddled against her. “Love you too, Munchkin.”
It had snowed since the RCMP had extracted the vehicle but not enough to fill the deep hole or to cover the big chunks of ice dispersed in the snow. The pattern and debris suggested the water had frozen around the snowmobile
after
it plunged into the creek. The accident would have happened before the cold front that had swept through in December.
Brent took off at the end of November.
The window of opportunity was too narrow…
As reality sank in, Hannah hugged her son tighter.
Brent had died within weeks, if not days, of his disappearance.
Rory tapped her shoulder then pointed at the woods. The wind had risen and the branches of the evergreens flapped, sending snow swirling to the ground.
Through the white mist, she glimpsed a shadow. A blink later, it was gone.
Chapter Twelve
Ever since Avery had been assigned to the Mooseland detachment,
being buried under paperwork
had taken a more literal sense. On the left corner of his desk were the cases he’d inherited from Abbott. On the right were the new cases that had landed on his lap since his arrival.
Foxy’s death had been relegated to the bottom of the right pile, buried underneath two acts of vandalism, an accusation of school bullying, a bar fight that spilled into the street, spawning a dozen disturbance calls, eight arrests for public intoxication, and one count of family violence. The belligerent husband was in custody along with the eight obnoxious goons sobering up in the drunk tank. Curses and protests coming from the jail cells floated down the hallway, annoying Avery to no end.
A dull headache burgeoned in his temples.
I need a drink.
Alone at the detachment on the graveyard shift, he downed a weakened version of his beloved Red Eye, then poured the rest of the beer in the sink. In the unlikely event that one of his colleagues walked in with a Breathalyzer, the alcohol level in Avery’s system wouldn’t be sufficient to incriminate himself.
Needing to uphold his reputation, he chucked the empty beer bottle in Cooper’s garbage can before returning attention to his computer screen.
After Rachel’s death, Avery had honed his hacking skills, but despite all his attempts, Abbott’s deleted messages remained out of reach. The technician who’d erased the dead corporal’s personal data had either done a thorough job or Abbott had never filed the information on his work computer.
Where did you hide the bloody evidence, Abbott? Your home computer?
The guy couldn’t have been that stupid…could he? He’d ended up dead after all, so it wasn’t impossible the late corporal had done something stupid—like trust the wrong person. A mistake Avery had no intention of repeating.
When faced with a dead end, experience had taught him to take a step back and work on something else while his brain drilled a way out.
He flipped through Abbott’s old cases. Names, violations…nothing rang a bell or stood out.
I’m looking in the wrong place.
The thought brought his mind back to Hannah Parker’s situation.
The report that Reed had garnered on Hannah had raised more questions than answers, but Avery refused to jump at the obvious conclusion reached by his sergeant.
Five years ago, Hannah had filed charges of sexual assault against a man, then recanted them the next day. Upon her grandfather’s death a month later, she’d implicated three individuals only to be proven wrong again when two teenagers confessed to the crime in a suicide note.
What really happened, Hannah? What prompted you to make all those false allegations?
The fire spitting in the stove and the angry husband ranting in his cell didn’t provide any answer. Avery knew a detective posted in Halifax that could enlighten him on the sexual assault charges, but contacting him at this time would be a breach of his assignment. Short of looking into the assault case, he could at least sink his teeth into the grandfather’s murder. The case should be archived in the storage room next to the jail cells.
Without paying attention to the rowdy guests, Avery entered the room and searched for the murder report. The doctor had called the old man Gramp Pike, and Avery found him under the
Ps
.
The report was dated February 10
th
, five years ago.
Marcel Pike. 61 years old. Cause of death: fractured skull.
A series of pictures showed the old man lying in the snow, his head clobbered in a similar fashion as the fox left on Hannah’s doorstep. An autopsy report detailed the numerous injuries Pike sustained during the attack. It was signed by Dr. G. Murphy.
No inconsistency jumped out at Avery, so he turned his attention to the police report.
Hannah had found her grandfather in the woods and glimpsed three suspects as they ran away. No worthy physical description of the individuals had been recorded. A week later, Constable Brent Abbott had discovered the bodies of two aboriginal youths near the crime scene. Percy Foley, 15, and Nelson Bourke, 16.
Upon seeing Abbott’s name, Avery looked at the bottom of the page. It sported Abbott’s signature. The former corporal had been the one conducting the investigation into Pike’s murder.
Is that how you earned your promotion, Abbott? By solving the case?
But Hannah had seen three suspects, not two.
An unsigned suicide note confessing the murder was attached to the next page. It’d been found in Bourke’s pocket.
As he read the note, Avery did a double take at the capital
Bs
and
Ps
.
***
A persistent buzzing roused Terri from her sleep. Rolling onto her side, she reached for an alarm clock she didn’t remember setting, only to encounter flesh—warm flesh.
Instantly awoken, she sat bolt upright in her bed. “What are you still doing here?”
She pushed her lover and grabbed a bathrobe. Growling, he cracked an eye open. Another buzz.
“I need to answer the door. Get dressed and get out.”
For Lyn’s sake, she never allowed men to stay until morning. Another buzz.
Hold on to your joystick, bucklebelt. I’m coming.
Growing more irritated by the second, she swung the door. “If you woke up my—Constable Stone?”
They hadn’t been officially introduced but she’d seen him roaming around town. With his five o’clock shadow and unkempt brown hair, Stone looked scruffy and shrewd. The man had no business standing on her front porch at seven o’clock in the morning.
“Mrs. Abbott?” Stone tucked his police cap under his arm and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “I saw a light in your window, so I thought you—”
A shadow crossed his face as he looked around her shoulder. Terri tensed like a rubber band, ready to snap at the man she’d bedded for showing his face.
“I’m very sorry for waking your daughter, ma’am.”
“My…” She spun around, and relief washed over her at the sight of Lyn sucking her thumb under the archway of the living room. “What’s up, baby?”
Cautiously eyeing the visitor, Lyn approached in a pink nightgown, one size too big.
An unsolicited gift from Brent’s parents.
When her daughter stopped at the edge of the doormat, Terri picked her up before returning her attention to Stone. His expression had softened.
“Your daughter has beautiful eyes, Mrs. Abbott.”
The compliment rang like a false note, increasing the pounding in Terri’s chest. “Is there a reason for your early morning visit, Officer?”
From now on, the darn bathroom light would stay off and Lyn would learn to pee in the dark.