Stubborn women.
Fallen trees and scratchy shrubs hindered the women’s escape. Despite his cumbersome progression, he gained on them with his longer strides.
Less than fifteen feet.
As she skipped over a dead tree, the snowshoe of the trailing woman caught on a branch. She tumbled onto her hands and knees.
“Lucky! Get up!”
Seizing his chances, he lunged forward and tackled her—the one named Lucky—into the snow. They rolled. He landed onto top, grasping her wrists. Kicking and thrashing, she swung her head left and right. He tightened his grip. “Stop or—”
A grimace warped her face, and she stilled her head. “Let go of me.”
Thunderstruck by the blue eyes glaring at him in defiance, Avery pushed himself up. “Han—”
Blackness embraced him.
***
Rowan caught them all bundled up in the vestibule, ready to venture outside in the middle of a snowstorm. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“We need to clear a path to the garage to go feed Finger.” Her grandfather placed a large gloved hand on Rory’s shoulder. “My little buddy is helping me.”
A coy smile played on the boy’s lips as he nodded. Since Avery’s departure, the youngster had become Bill’s shadow. Not even Gail’s gooey chocolate chip cookies could tear those two apart.
“You named the coyote Finger?” A wildlife officer had collected the dead female coyote and pups and tested them for disease. Why he didn’t take the surviving baby at the same time boggled Rowan’s mind. Nevertheless, he’d assured them there was no health risk associated with the pup in the garage.
“She likes licking Rory’s fingers, so we called her Finger. Right, Buddy?” The tuque fell down the boy’s eyes when he gave Bill a brisk nod of approval.
“Well, you make sure Rory keeps all his fingers. And no climbing on any roof.” To remind Bill that he broke three ribs last winter while clearing the snow from the roof of the garage seemed redundant.
***
Something licked his face. Something warm, and wet—and furry.
Avery snapped his eyes open, quickly moving his hand to his face. “Snowflake?”
Protected from the cold by her heavy sweater and boots, the small dog caught his glove between her front paws, and through the leather, nibbled at his thumb. Never in his life had Avery been so happy to see an animal. Rory would be thrilled to learn Snowflake was safe and sound.
“Are you hungry, girl? Where have you been?”
And where am I?
As his gaze wandered through the mayhem around him, vestiges of his encounter in the forest emerged from deep inside his throbbing head.
Hannah?
Unsure he should trust his memory, he touched the back of his head and winced. A lump the size of a hockey puck protruded from his skull. The attack had been real and Hannah had been there.
She’s alive.
He should have been relieved. He would be had her behavior made sense. A woman had attacked him, and Hannah had fled with her.
“What the bloody hell is going on?”
He sat inside a ransacked shack, his back against a barrel, the only object still intact amidst knocked down shelves, damaged tools, dented cans, and shattered glasses. The sun shining through a hole in the ceiling and broken window cast a yellow hue on the destruction.
The sight looked familiar. He’d been inside a similar shack, though he couldn’t recall where or under which circumstances.
Done playing with his glove, Snowflake cuddled against his chest, near his holster. His gun was in his possession, loaded. His badge, his wallet, and his phone were in his pocket. Nothing seemed to be missing.
“Let’s get out of here.” He picked up the dog and slowly stood. No dizziness or weakness.
Good.
The door was ajar. He pushed it, took a step outside, and gaped in consternation at the ruins of Hannah’s cabin.
He’d somehow ended up in her shed. His snowmobile was nowhere in sight.
Chapter Twenty-
Three
“Greta?” Though she hadn’t seen any gun in the cave, Lucky didn’t want to startle Greta by entering the premises unannounced. “Are you there?”
Crouched by the fire, the old woman gestured for her to come in. Her lips didn’t move until after Lucky joined her. “Where have you been?”
“I couldn’t leave him. He would have died.” When the officer had looked at her, seconds before Greta hit him with her walking staff, a peculiar expression had registered on his face.
“He would have regained consciousness and gone home before the cold got to him.” The old woman stirred the embers with a stick. Her feelings about the RCMP officer as visible as the hairy birthmark on her left cheek. “Where did you take him?”
Lucky had borrowed his snowmobile. With him unconscious on the seat behind her, she’d followed the tracks in the snow to where he’d come from.
“A shed near some ruins in a clearing.” A cute white dog wearing a blue sweater and black booties had welcomed her arrival, suggesting a human presence in the vicinity. She had cooped up the officer with the animal. “Someone will find him.”
“What about his snowmobile?”
The fire illuminated Greta’s retreat toward the entrance of the cave.
“I left it by the stream where he’d caught up with us, and disabled the engine. From there, I was careful covering my tracks.”
At first, Lucky had been afraid she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to the cave, but it’d seemed she’d been blessed with a good sense of direction.
If only I could say the same of my memory.
“I’m sure you did good, Lucky, but it doesn’t matter anymore.” Greta picked a hunting knife from the top of a rain barrel and traced the blade. “I’ve fought for sixty years. That’s long enough. Once dawn comes, I will finally rest.”
***
Terri hurried to answer the door before the buzzer awoke her daughter.
“Lee?” His RCMP cruiser was parked in front of the house. He wore his civilian clothes. “It’s late. What are you doing here?”
A sheepish smile traveled all the way up to the corner of his eyes. “I was in the neighborhood. I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”
“Really?” The entire crappy town
was
the neighborhood. This wasn’t much of an excuse. “Come in. I’ll make coffee.”
He shed his boots and coat, and followed her into the kitchen. “I saw the reflection of the television in the window. I thought you might like some company.”
“That’s sweet of you.” His surprise visit added a much welcome diversion to her lone, boring evening. “Are you busy with the explosion?”
In jeans and a plaited shirt, Lee appeared heavier and older than when he wore his uniform. She preferred the latter.
“If you mean Hannah Parker’s cabin, I have nothing to do with it.” He stood by the counter, his elbow brushing her arm as he readied two mugs. “The sergeant gave the case to Stone.”
“Will Stone do a good job?” In the earlier years of their marriage, Brent had talked about his cases, used her as a sounding board, something she’d relished.
“Are you kidding?” Keeping his voice low didn’t stop the indignation from resounding loud and clear. “The guy is inept, Terri. He forgot his Ski-Doo deep in the woods and called me to go pick him up. I wasn’t impressed.”
“How did he do that?” Something about Stone didn’t sit right with her. She didn’t trust him.
“The engine stalled. Had he bothered looking under the hood, he would have seen the loose wire. It took me two seconds to fix it.” Lee shook his head as he took his mug to the table and sat, one leg crossed over his opposite knee. “There’s no signal that far out in the woods, so he walked to Parker’s obliterated cabin. By the time I showed up, he couldn’t remember where he’d abandoned the darn thing. I rode with him for nearly an hour before we spotted it at the fork.”
“He’d parked where the creek split in two and walked from there? It must have taken him half a day.” Her back against the counter, she cupped her mug with both hands to stop her fingers from twitching. “Why did he venture that way?”
“He got lost.” Her guest took a sip of his coffee then added a teaspoon of sugar from the bowl on Lyn’s placemat. “I swear the guy has the internal compass of a twister.”
The story sounded too far-fetched not to be true. “Any sign of Parker or the child?”
“No, but Stone found her dog starving in the shed.”
“Why don’t we go sit on the couch?” No man had ever resisted her ingenuous smile and fluttering eyelashes. “I’d love to hear more about your dreadful day with Stone.”
***
Seated on the morgue table late at night, Avery winced under Fred’s palpations. “I fell on the ice and hit my head.”
That was the official story he’d fed his colleagues. Until he solved that case, he intended to keep Hannah and the mysterious woman’s presence in the woods a secret.
“Any memory loss, dizziness…pain?”
He’d been whacked, and the doctor was prodding every millimeter of the bump. Of course it hurt.
“It’s just a bruise, Doc, but the sergeant insisted I come.” Following the order allowed Avery to visit Fred without rousing any suspicion. “Just write down you examined me and I’m good to return to duty, then we can talk off the record.”
“Is it about Hannah?” Fred stopped his examination and took a wobbly step backward. “Did you find her and Rory?”
“I found Snowflake in the shed. Alive.” Avery had left the dog in his kitchen with a bowl of water and dry cereal until he bought some canine food.
“That’s good news, Stone. Hannah…she’s a smart woman, you know.” The doctor fidgeted with the stethoscope wrapped around his neck. “Gramp taught us survival skills, and Hannah has always been a fast learner. If Snowflake managed to survive, so did Hannah. She probably took shelter somewhere with Rory. It’s just a matter of finding where. You can’t stop looking for her. She may be injured and unable to…”
Fred’s voice trailed off in despair, and Avery felt sorry for the man. Disguising the truth brought him no satisfaction, but to protect Rory, he couldn’t divulge his little man’s whereabouts.
“There were no bodies on the site of the explosion, Doc. I intend to keep looking until I find them.”
As the doctor nodded, his eyes lost their focus. “I heard a faulty valve caused the propane tank to explode. It’s all my fault. The cabin was old. I knew it wasn’t safe for her to live there alone with Rory. It wasn’t like I couldn’t afford to support them, I even built a basement suite in my new house just for her and Rory, but she refused to move in. I should have insisted. I—” He slapped his arms down his sides. “Why didn’t she listen?”
Knowing Hannah, her brother could have argued until he turned blue, she wouldn’t have budged.
“She’s a proud and independent woman.”
The kind of woman that can haunt a man for the rest of his life.
“Did she ever talk to you about the day she found your grandfather dead in the forest?”
Fred pulled a chair from underneath the counter and straddled it the wrong way. Clamping his hands together, he rested his elbows on the edge of the backrest. “Funny you mention his death. She came to see me a few days ago. She wanted to look at the autopsy reports of Gramp and the two teenagers who killed him.”
“Did she say why?” If she’d been suspicious of her grandfather’s death before he showed her the suicide note, then it was possible she’d asked one too many questions and threatened the murderers. It could spell motive to kill her. Avery wished she’d confided in him.
“No, and I refused her request.” As her brother, he could have told her about their grandfather, but as a coroner, he was bound by confidentiality where it concerned the two teenagers. “I could tell she wasn’t too happy with me. That’s the last time we spoke.”
Unfounded guilt added an invisible weight on Fred’s slumped shoulders—guilt Avery wasn’t at liberty to alleviate.
“If you don’t mind, Doc, I’d like to see those reports.” He’d seen Pike’s file, but not the boys’.
“Help yourself.” Looking as despondent as Rory when faced with an army of green peas, Fred pointed at a filing cabinet next to a water cooler. “Alphabetical order by last name.”
On top of the cabinet, a miniature skeleton dangled from the hook of a banana holder. Avery read the label above each handle. First drawer: A-H. He opened it and browsed from the front for Nelson Bourke’s file. Once he retrieved it, he looked for Percy Foley’s.
Elliott. Evans. Fisher. Fleming. Foley. Noel Foley?
When Avery had read the police file on Noel Foley, there had been no mention of the man’s death. He pulled the file and read through it.
On November 13th, Noel died of a single gunshot to the heart. Toxicology showed elevated level of alcohol.
Fred’s signature was at the bottom of the autopsy report.
The man had died a week after he was arrested by Abbott. A week later the corporal had met the same fate. The day Avery believed in such coincidences would be the day he started gambling.
“I need your help, Doc. Does the name Noel Foley ring a bell?” His gaze focused on Fred, Avery waved the report into the air. “According to this, you dislodged a bullet from his heart last November.”
The coroner straightened his back, a sign that he showed interest in the question. “Foley cleaned his loaded rifle while he was drunk. Alistair, his neighbor from across the pond, heard the shot. By the time he reached Foley’s cabin, it was too late. Not sure how much of an inquiry your colleagues made, but his death was ruled accidental.”
If his
colleagues
investigated the accidental shooting, they didn’t leave any paper trail. “You mentioned a cabin. Was it near Hannah’s?”
“No. Across town. Opposite direction. Foley had no family left. The cabin is probably abandoned now. Why?”
The cases had to be related, but until he could prove it, Avery chose to ignore the question.
“I want you to write down the direction to Foley’s and Alistair’s cabins and I need copies of those files. Where’s your photocopier?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lucky scanned the white landscape surrounding the back entrance of the cave.
Greta, where are you?