Edge of Survival (8 page)

“They’re speaking Inuttut. The Labrador version of the Inuit language.” Constable McCoy kept her voice to a whisper.

“You understand what they’re saying?”

“Not really, sorry, sir.” She shook her head. “But I think they’re talking to the
AngajukKâk
—the mayor.”

The Watsons lived in a modest, well-kept home that backed onto the forest. Through the living room doorway, Griff saw pictures of other children and grandchildren. He recognized Sylvie as a schoolgirl, smiling shyly into the camera. A life of addiction had aged her face with cruelness and without pity.

“They have other kids?” Griff asked McCoy.

“Yes.” She leaned closer. “Three, but the others are much older than Sylvie.”

“I need to talk to them if they live in town.”

She noted his request down in her small notepad.

Griff glanced over at Charlie Watson and wondered how his own kids were doing. Part of him wanted to get home, grab them tight and never let anything bad touch them. The rational part of his brain knew life didn’t work that way. At least Marcia was a stay-at-home mom and whatever else she might be, she was a great mother.

The couple got off the phone and turned to face them.

“Have you found out who did this to my daughter?” The lines in the old man’s face looked freshly dug.

The parents’ alibis had checked out, and one of the primary duties of a homicide detective was to not further traumatize the survivors. Griff took this part of the job very seriously. “I’m sorry, sir, we have no suspects at this time.”

Yesterday the local commander, Sergeant-in-Charge Percy Roblin, had escorted the Watsons to Goose Bay to formally identify their daughter’s body. That had to be the worst experience for a parent. Burying a child was bad enough, having one stolen from you was horrific.

Slippery ribbons of tears ran down the mother’s face and she went to sit on a chair in the corner of the room, curling over and into herself, saying over and over, “My baby, my baby, my baby.” She didn’t look as though she’d slept since she’d heard the news.

“We processed the scene, took fingerprints and sent all the evidence to the lab.” The ME had completed the autopsy before the family had identified the body.

“One of those miners killed Sylvie.” Charlie looked up and the hatred in his dark eyes was so intense, Griff braced against the weight. “I’m going to call a meeting with the local council and put a stop to the mining project.”

Griff cleared his throat. “You’re right to be upset, sir, and I cannot imagine what you are going through. But it is our job to apprehend the individual who your killed your daughter, and I promise you
I
will do everything in my power to do so.”

Charlie’s mouth crumpled on a sob.

“And, you’re right, it
could
be one of the miners from out of town who killed your daughter.” Griff held up his hand, palm out, trying to instill calmness in a world of outrageous grief. “But we know from experience that stranger killings are less common than people think, and I don’t want to jump to conclusions. I want to catch the man who did this, not arrest a convenient scapegoat just so everyone can sleep at night.”

“We’ve never had murder like this around here before.”

“I’m afraid your daughter was in a high-risk profession.” Griff watched Charlie’s fingers curl into a fist. “And her problems with alcohol and drugs might have compounded her vulnerability.” Griff walked to the window at the back of the house, opened the drapes to let in a little natural light. The Watsons blinked as if it hurt. “People kill for different reasons. Sex, greed, revenge. To keep someone quiet…”

Charlie’s eyes shimmered and he turned away. Mary Watson wiped her eyes and climbed unsteadily to her feet, moving to her husband’s side.

The despair ate at Griff’s composure. “Can you think of anyone who wanted to hurt your daughter, Mrs. Watson? Anyone with a grudge?”

She shook her head.

“How long before you get the DNA evidence back?” Charlie asked.

Every damn person knew about DNA these days. It made Griff’s job more difficult because the real world didn’t operate to fill a sixty-minute TV time slot.

“The labs are busy, it can take up to a year in some cases.”

“A year!” Charlie yelled. “Is it money you need?” The man went to the sideboard and pulled out his checkbook, holding Griff’s gaze as he wrote a blank check. He ripped it out and thrust it at him.

McCoy’s eyes flickered but she found her poker face. She straightened her shoulders and settled her hand on her equipment belt.

“It isn’t about money, Mr. Watson,” Griff replied gently. “The labs are backed up. I have put a priority notice on this.” And he’d done that for personal reasons rather than professional, which made him feel like a real prize. He wanted to solve this murder and go home to his own family.

Charlie’s silence was defiant and his fingers trembled. How would Griff feel if his daughter was murdered and someone said it would take a year to run the tests? He’d move heaven and hell to catch the bastard, and damn the consequences. Unfortunately, Sylvie Watson’s murder wasn’t the only crime being investigated, and the lab only had so many resources. Prostitute murders generally rated with gang-bangers and drug dealers. Griff hadn’t created the system. He was just a small cog in a cranky old machine, and all he could do was his job.

“Did Sylvie have any close friends or boyfriends?”

Mary shook her head. “She knows everybody in town but most of her school friends moved away or settled down and got married. The only people she spent time with…well, when she was sober…were us and her son.”

McCoy and Griff exchanged a glance. “And she lived here?”

Charlie squeezed his eyes shut but a single tear leaked down his cheek. “I converted the garage into an apartment for her.”

“She brought her clients back there?” McCoy asked.

“She wasn’t a prostitute!” Charlie yelled so loud the little boy in the other room scuttled through to grab hold of his grandma.

Shit.
Griff glared at McCoy for her lack of tact, although it was a question that needed to be asked.

Mary picked up the boy, rocking him soothingly. “Yes, but only if she was so intoxicated she didn’t know better.” Her voice broke. “Lately, we started keeping Zach in the house with us because…”

Because they hadn’t wanted anything bad to happen to him.

But they’d failed their daughter. He could see the thought in their eyes. And it was ripping them apart.

“Do you know who her clients were? Do you know who Zach’s father is?” Griff wasn’t comfortable talking in front of the young boy, who clung to his grandma like a koala. “Maybe we should go to the detachment, for privacy.” He nodded to the child.

“No.” Mary shushed and stroked the kid’s hair. “He’s due a nap, he’s tired.” She shot her husband a look and jiggled the toddler on her hip. “Charlie doesn’t want to hear it, but most of the men in this town used our daughter for…you know what.” Mary’s eyes were both fierce and lost. “But Zach was a gift from God.” She kissed the boy’s jet-black hair.

“Perhaps we could run a DNA test?” Griff suggested. It might give them more information, maybe a motive, and it might provide some closure for Sylvie’s parents if they knew who’d fathered the child.

“No.” Mary hugged the boy fiercely and he squirmed. “He’s all we have left of Sylvie. I’m not losing him too.”

She thought the father might take the boy away from them, and he might. Griff nodded, unable to argue about the rights of the father when these people were barely functioning. For now.

“Can we see her apartment?” Constable McCoy asked.

“Why?” Charlie seemed to gain some control over his emotions and turned back to face them. “She was murdered in Frenchmans Bight, not here.”

Mary covered the little boy’s ears and rattled off what sounded to Griff like an ass-kicking for talking about murder in front of the kid. It seemed a little late for propriety.

Charlie’s shoulders hunched like an old man’s. He walked over to a rack behind the kitchen door and grabbed a set of keys. “Here.” He tossed them and McCoy caught them.

“Sylvie made mistakes. If you gave her a choice between doing something easy or something hard, she would always choose the easy way.” His thick brows lowered and his eyes glittered with tears. A shimmer of something feral moved over his face—a father’s anguish, raw and defiant, but something else too, rage. “I know to you she’s just another dead prostitute, but she was my baby. Promise me you’ll find her killer so we can put our baby to rest. Promise me, because if you don’t find him, I will.”

Daniel dropped the fish team off at the mouth of Mitshishu Brook for Day Two of their operation. Tooly was taking his ATV and would meet them there. Daniel had struck up a friendship with the old trapper when he’d first spotted the cabin from the air and gone down to investigate. He fetched the old guy supplies and slipped in the occasional bottle of whisky, appreciating just how hard it must be to live in the wilderness.

Now he was late.

The sun reflected off the sea like titanium rainbows as Daniel pulled on the collective, speeding toward the slinging site. It had been a successful morning, worth being a few minutes behind schedule. He’d gotten someone to babysit the Doc and maybe get her out of Labrador faster, which suited him fine. Call him chauvinist or prejudiced, but he didn’t think a diabetic should be let loose in this wilderness.

He squinted at the sun’s reflection off the water. Sweat beaded his brow and his mouth was parched from dehydration. He felt like crap. Was it booze? Or lack of sleep? Or leftover nightmares from his old life that just wouldn’t quit? Or maybe the ghost of a woman who had been ruthlessly murdered?

His gut knotted. Sylvie had been nice enough, an easygoing alcoholic. Keeping her legs together hadn’t been a priority, but none of the men around Nain had complained, and he was hardly the model of abstinence. She hadn’t done anything to deserve a blade across the jugular. Her kid certainly hadn’t deserved to be an orphan at such a young age. He was a black-eyed, black-haired little tyke, and reminded Daniel of another child halfway around the world…

Emotion swelled in his throat, threatening to choke off his airway as he raced over the water, stripping the breeze. Memories burst through his mind.
Heat, dust and sweat. The taste of gunpowder so thick on his tongue he almost gagged. The recoil of the gun against the palm of his hand
.

The self-disgust that had reared up when he’d admitted to the cops he’d had sex with Sylvie reminded him vividly of his final interview with the Commanding Officer of the Regiment. The brass had let him take the fall for doing what he’d been trained to do. But he’d made them do it. He’d forced their hand because he wasn’t worthy of that beige beret or flaming-sword cap badge.

The reporter he’d risked his life to save had obtained inside information on the hostages that she hadn’t shared. She hadn’t been there to save people, she’d been there to film the action. There’d been no
“Thanks for saving me from rape, torture and decapitation.”
No
sorry
for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. No shouldering her portion of the blame when everything had turned to shit and her husband had died.

Instead she’d branded Daniel a killer and plastered his face across every tabloid newspaper and broadsheet in the UK. She’d blown his chance of doing covert military operations for the rest of his natural born days and embarrassed the finest military unit in the world. Worse,
he’d
embarrassed the finest military unit in the world.
He’d
made a decision to protect his patrol and fire his weapon into that derelict room. And while it might have been the right thing to do, those decisions had stripped him bare and flayed his hide, leaving nothing but the shell of a man he’d once been.

And so he’d turned his back on society and responsibility.

But suddenly, his no-strings lifestyle felt less than worthy. Not so much “living for today,” as “not giving a damn about anybody or anything.” And while he did not want to get entangled in relationships, he didn’t want to throw away what little integrity he had left. He didn’t want to crash a helicopter full of people because he was too tired or hungover to do the job properly.

His character had been annihilated by a member of the British press and now he was proving her right. This was not a proud realization for a man who’d once been top of his game. It was time to grab hard onto the only thing he had left—flying.

So, no more one-night stands. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t gone without before. And more important, no more booze. The thought alone brought him out in the sort of cold panic that stank of cowardice and addiction.

When he had sunk so low?

He transmitted his location into the ether on the aviation frequency. There were five other helicopter pilots working the zone, and a flotilla of small planes in and out of the north.

“Heading north to Tuttuk Pond, this is helicopter Foxtrot Delta Charlie Tango, over. Any conflicting traffic, call Delta Charlie Tango at Tuttuk Pond.”

The radio crackled.

“Foxtrot Delta Charlie Tango, this is Bell Victor Alpha Delta Hugo on the ground at Tuttuk Pond, over.”

There was another helicopter already on site? “Alpha Delta Hugo, Delta Charlie Tango. Any reason two of us turned up for the same job?”

He heard a laugh on the other side of the connection. “No one told you, Fox? It’s your day to go piss in a pot, Danny boy. Your orders have changed, and you’re to head to the clinic at Nain for a spot alcohol check, out.”

“Roger that.” There was a punch to his stomach, both from the nickname he hadn’t heard in years and the sudden fear that he’d destroyed his newfound career by drinking when he knew it was against the rules. On this tour, it wasn’t just an eight-hour bottle-to-throttle rule. Any blood alcohol level above basal might be enough to throw him off the job, and even though he wouldn’t lose his pilot’s license, he was sick of fucking up.

He circled the site and acknowledged his fellow pilot one last time. And there was Dwight Wineberg, General Foreman for the mine, asshole extraordinaire, standing down on the lakeshore giving him the finger. Daniel wanted to swoop low over the jerk and make him dive for cover, but that was too juvenile, even for him.

“Delta Charlie Tango. Good luck, son,” the other pilot keyed in. “Alpha Delta Hugo, over and out.”

The swelling in Daniel’s throat expanded until he had to work to swallow the lump. Bloody hell. He hadn’t attempted to get to know the other pilots or personnel here, and the guy was reaching out to him. “Copy that. Over and out.”

He flew slower now and licked his dry lips. Then he pulled a bottle of water from his pack and started chugging. When he finished the first one, he took out a second and started drinking that too. It was time to wise up. His old life was dead, but there was no excuse for wallowing in self-pity. Not anymore. Not unless he wanted to lose everything he’d built for himself in the past twenty-three months and two weeks.

And if the nightmares and flashbacks still interfered with his job?

He’d deal with that on an
if
and
when
basis.

Thanks to Tooly’s expertise, Cam’s study was finally underway. They were on their second sampling site and she’d inserted eight transmitters into the corpulent, brightly colored bodies of
Salvelinus alpinus
down at the counting fence. Now, a few miles upstream, they were beside a crystal-clear pool below a ten-foot waterfall. The waterfall was the only major obstacle for fish along the course of this brook—until the mine company built the dam.

She’d set up holding nets and the surgery table, and now they just needed to catch a few more fish for this to qualify as a really good day. Cam smiled. The feeling of success was so heady she bounced on the balls of her feet, impatient to grab the euphoria by the throat and hogtie it so it didn’t get away.

The water felt icy against her waders, but she loved standing in a river, hundreds of miles from the nearest mall, catching fish that probably hadn’t seen a human before. It felt real—as if her work actually meant something. And fish didn’t care that her pancreas wasn’t in full working order.

Summer had a solid grip on the land. Flowers popped everywhere, irises and buttercups dotting the landscape, cotton grass puffing along the riverbanks. Birds sang and insects hunted and fish migrated in a fierce rush of activity, taking advantage of this short, much-needed break from ice and snow. It was glorious, and as long as she concentrated on the job, she didn’t have to remember that a woman had been brutalized just a couple of days ago.

Tooly, Vikki and Tommy—an unlikely combination—pulled the ends of a seine net toward shore. Katie stood with a dip-net ready to catch the gravid char that splashed and struggled in the shallows.

Arctic char were anadromous, shifting seasonally between fresh and seawater to breed and eat. They grew slowly but, unlike Pacific salmon, they didn’t necessarily die after they spawned. Cam’s tags would tell them the location of vital spawning and overwintering areas in this river system and which areas needed protecting.

The species was highly sensitive to environmental disturbances. Not only was the threat of pollution a problem, but if combined with rising temperatures as a result of climate change, the effects could be made worse by increased natural mineral runoff. The precarious equilibrium between man’s needs and nature reminded Cam of her own daily battle with diabetes. The key to success was about getting the balance right, and she wanted to help make that happen.

She wiped the sweat from her eyes, then filled a red cooler with fresh water and dragged it to the shore. She scooped in a couple more buckets of water before adding a vial of pre-measured clove oil, a natural anesthetic.

It stank.

“We’ve got seven fish here, Dr. Young,” Katie shouted excitedly, getting splashed in the face by an irritated tail for her enthusiasm.

“That’s great, guys. And call me Cam. Dr. Young is my mother.” Cam flicked on the battery-operated bubblers that aerated the anesthetic bath. She opened a number-10 scalpel blade, attached it to the holder and set it to the side of her über-sophisticated washing-up-bowl surgery table.

“Put a fish in the cooler, Katie. Vikki, I need you to record data.”

Her friend sauntered over and took up the notebook and pen Cam had laid out. The hot weather had Vikki wearing a sheer bug jacket over a black sports bra.

“When can I start taking biological samples?” Vikki asked.

“Tomorrow, if we catch the same number of fish as we did today.” Cam glanced away from the fish, who was about to turn belly up. “You enjoying your first adventure in the field?”

Vikki pouted then grinned. “Let’s just say
wilderness
sounds just fine until you have to pee behind a rock.” They laughed. Despite their different personalities, they’d been friends for a long time. Vikki slapped a blackfly crawling up her neck, blood dribbling over her perfect skin. This wasn’t an easy environment to work in. “I’m better in the lab, honey, and right now I’d swap places with George in a heartbeat.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Two broken ankles would be worth an exit pass,” Vikki admitted. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a pink scrunchie, while Cam’s was escaping her ball cap like damaged clock springs.

Katie came over to watch the surgery while Tommy and Tooly laid out the net to dry in the sun. Cam lifted the drugged fish out of the cooler, weighed it, measured its length, calling out the results to Vikki, who recorded everything in the log.

Cam laid the fish on the bed of foam, adjusted glass tubes so that water pumped directly across the gills, and then she picked up her scalpel. “It’s a male, you can tell from the intense coloration and the kype—the hook—developing on the lower jaw.”

“I’m not an idiot, Cam,” Vikki snapped.

Cam blinked. “I was talking to Katie.”

Vikki blushed. “Oh, sorry.”

Cam made a small incision in the fish’s belly. “Is that why you decided to come back and do a Ph.D. after all these years? To prove you’re not an idiot?”

One side of Vikki’s mouth tugged into a wry smile. “I got tired of people assuming my bra size was bigger than my IQ. Plus, modeling isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Cam wanted to ask why she slept around so much but didn’t want to jinx the newfound harmony. Instead she picked up a radio tag, its long coiled antennae sticking out of one end. She removed the attached magnet and explained to Katie, “The tag works on a mercury switch that the magnet turns on and off. The magnet saves the battery when it’s not in operation, so the tags last longer.”

Telemetry equipment was expensive, so the longer tags lasted, and the more information they got out of each transmitter, the better. She pushed it gently into the fish’s body then inserted a hypodermic needle through the body wall to thread a short bit of antenna outside. She sutured the incision with dissolvable sutures, and the fish was in the recovery pool when the next fish turned belly-up in the anesthetic. It wasn’t difficult work once you were organized. Catching fish was the limiting factor.

Tooly came to stand watch as she did the next surgery. He didn’t say much but she was reassured by his presence. There was a rustle in the undergrowth and Cam gave a squeak as a rabbit hopped out of a bush. She grinned sheepishly. “Thought it might be a bear.”

“Bear?” Vikki swiveled to face the bush and bumped up against Cam. “I do
not
want to meet a bear.”

“Don’t panic,” Cam laughed. “We have Tooly to save us. Right, Tooly?”

The old man nodded, those black unfathomable eyes staring off into the bush.

“And I have a whistle and pepper spray in my pocket, and some bear bangers in my pack, thanks to Daniel.”

Vikki muttered something uncomplimentary under her breath that sounded like, “Freak.”

“Hey, you were all over him when we first arrived. What’d he do?” Cam could have bitten off her tongue for asking.

Vikki shot her a glare. “Nothing. And he’ll never get the chance to do nothing ever again. Jerk.”

Did that mean they hadn’t slept together
? Cam quirked a brow and Vikki’s lips sank at the corners. They made a beautiful couple, and despite Vikki’s protests they were very much alike—maybe too alike.

“Believe me, despite the dreamy exterior? Daniel Fox isn’t worth it.” Vikki wrote down the next tag number.

Cam’s stomach hurt. She concentrated on the surgery, but she wouldn’t be honest if she didn’t admit to a large dose of disappointment—not that she’d ever sleep with him, but…