A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(24)

“You can give me any details you want. You just don’t need to.”

She nods.

We talk for a little more after that, until she’s flagging, and I make some excuse to go. As I leave, she says, “I’ll be okay.”

“I know.”

And I think she will be. I’m just not sure I could have said the same if I was the one in a hole for over a year.

Fifteen months.

Sixty-three weeks.

Four hundred and forty days.





FOURTEEN

Dalton and I walk to the office. We don’t sit inside. Dalton will, for my sake, but as long as the temperature isn’t twenty below, he’s happier out of doors. We stop at the bakery to grab coffee and then as we detour through the station, we find a bottle of Irish whiskey beside the machine—a gift from Isabel. Dalton splashes some into our coffees. I carry those. He grabs caribou skin blankets.

We sit on the back deck, drinking our coffee, my hands wrapped around my mug for warmth. It’s late afternoon, and the sun has fallen behind the trees, darkness stretching with each passing moment.

“We still need to search for Sutherland,” I say. “I know that’s probably pointless. The storm will have erased his tracks, and I suspect we’re looking for a body. But if it’s the same perpetrator, which it certainly seems to be, there’s a chance he’s holding Sutherland captive.”

“You think so?” Dalton takes another swig of his coffee. “From what I’ve read, with this kind of thing, there’s not much point in taking a man.”

“Playing devil’s advocate, I’d point out that a man can, biologically, serve the same purpose, and also that this is more an issue of control. He watched her. For hours. But, yes, I think it’s far more likely this guy killed Sutherland as a trespasser. We still need to look. I also have to go back to that cave, to see what clues I can find.”

“First light,” he says. “We’ll take the horses.”

I lean against the wall and sip my spiked coffee. “You haven’t said if there’s anyone in your book you really like for this.”

“Neither have you. Which means there’s no one either of us really likes.”

“Hmm.”

“We’ve got people who’ve committed murder, but this guy kept Nicole alive. And the folks we’ve got mostly killed one person for a reason. Whoever did this enjoyed it. No other purpose. If we have anyone here fitting that description, I don’t know it.”

“Except, one could argue, the pedophiles.”

“Of which we have three, and two don’t fit the description. One’s a woman. And Lang’s too skinny.”

“Then that’s the only way to narrow the field. Focus on those who could have done it. Right time period. Right gender. Right skin color. Right basic physical size.”

“Forty possibilities.”

“You’re fast.”

He looks over. “You gonna pretend you didn’t already work it out?”

“No, I was just giving you props.”

His brows knit.

“Props. Proper respect. Yes, I have been working it through. My calculations, though, give me forty-seven.”

Now his brows shoot up. “You fail math, Butler?”

“Remember that for skin tone she was looking at him in dim light and in contrast to her. All she can say is that his skin is lighter. That doesn’t make him Caucasian.”

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

After a moment, he says, “What’s your take on Nicole? She seems to be coping well.”

“Maybe too well. It might be shock. Which worries me.”

“Agreed. We’ve got Isabel keeping an eye on her, but Isabel did therapy for people having normal problems. Not that.”

“So you’d like a second opinion?” Isabel’s voice precedes her as she walks around the building.

“Yeah, under the circumstances, I’d like a second opinion.”

“Then get one. You’ve got a better source than me here. Someone who can assess both Nicole’s physical and mental health. You just need to kick his ass hard enough.”

“I wish I could,” Dalton grumbles. “If I threaten to put him on shoveling duty for a week, he’ll just take off his damn butcher’s apron, pull on his parka, and ask me to point him in the right direction. Only person who can get him to do it?” He looks at me.

I sigh. “I’ll go talk to Mathias.”





FIFTEEN

I push open the door to the butcher’s shop. From the back room comes the ominous sound of a saw skritch-scraping through bone. The smell of blood hangs so heavy I can taste it.

Most residents will stop right here and call a tentative “hello?” If they don’t get an answer, they’ll leave.

I walk around the counter and poke my head into the back room. “Mathias? Avez-vous une minute?”

The saw stops, and his voice drifts out, “Pour vous, oui.”

Most Canadians my age have taken French. Years of it, the end result of which is that we can travel to Paris and ask for directions en fran?ais and even understand the response if it isn’t too long. Asking for those directions in Montreal is trickier, because what we’ve learned isn’t Quebecois.