Dead Ground (Harbinger P.I. Book 4) Read online

  Jim nodded. “Yeah, should be.” He walked the trail slowly, his eyes locked on the ground, looking for signs like broken twigs, depressions in the dirt, and scattered leaves. “She came this way.”

  Leon looked at the trail ahead and then back the way we had come. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would she run this way instead of back to the main road?”

  “She was panicking,” Jim said. “And the fact that they were in their sleeping bags indicates the attack took place last night. She was running in the darkness, confused and terrified. He pointed at an area of grass at the edge of the trail. “She fell here.” He inspected the ground around the area. “And then she disappeared.”

  “What?” Leon asked.

  “She didn’t go any farther than this. She fell over here, probably tripping over a tree root or branch, and then vanished. There are no more signs.”

  I examined the trail. “And there are no signs that anything was following her.”

  “No,” Jim confirmed. “It’s like she was running from a ghost.”

  “Whatever killed that guy wasn’t a ghost,” I said.

  Jim opened the backpack and took out a crystal shard. He held it up so we could see that it wasn’t glowing. “It wasn’t a magical creature or some kind of spell either. There’s no trace of magic here at all.”

  “So something broke into the tent but left no tracks,” I said. “It ripped the guy open and fed on him while the woman got out of the tent and ran along the trail. She fell here and then there’s no further trace of her or the thing that took her.”

  Jim stroked his chin, looking along the trail and then back to where the police officers searched the undergrowth. Then his gaze turned slowly upward to the evening sky.

  When he did that, I knew what he was thinking. “It can fly,” I said.

  Jim nodded. “It plucked the woman off the ground and took her to its lair.”

  Leon was also looking up at the sky. “So what the hell is it?”

  “A nightwing,” Jim said.

  “Sounds like you guys have been reading too many comic books.” The voice brought my attention back to the trail where a man in a gray sports jacket, gray tie, and black pants was walking toward us from the clearing. He was bald, sported a goatee, and wore shades. He was lean and tough-looking.

  “Detective Girard,” Jim whispered to us.

  Behind the bald detective, walking briskly to catch up with him, was a petite redhead in a gray pantsuit. She also wore shades. “We don’t have time for this, Girard,” she said.

  “Don’t have time?” he asked sarcastically. “But Walker was about to reveal the murderer. I’m sure he said we should be on the lookout for Nightwing. I’m beginning to think he doesn’t know the difference between fantasy and reality. Oh, yeah, that’s right, he doesn’t”

  She shook her head at him. I was sure she was rolling her eyes behind the shades.

  “Who are your friends?” Girard asked Walker when he reached us. “No, wait, don’t tell me. These guys are elves who came from Mordor to help you solve the case.”

  “Elves don’t live in Mordor,” Leon said.

  Girard looked at him for a moment before saying, “Is that right?”

  The woman’s manner was friendlier. She removed her shades to reveal bright blue eyes, and said, “Hi, I’m Detective Frasier and this is my partner Detective Girard.” She held out her hand to Leon, and then, after shaking with him, did the same with me. Her grip was strong, despite her small frame.

  Girard kept his hands firmly in his pockets.

  “What have you got for us?” Frasier asked Jim.

  “There were two victims this time,” Jim told her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “The guy in the tent is Michael Roland, twenty-four, from Quebec. His girlfriend, Jeanette Gautier, twenty-two, also from Quebec, is missing. She held up two driver’s licenses. One showed the dark-haired guy from the tent on a decidedly better day. The other showed a young blond woman whom I hoped was still alive.

  “She’s been taken,” Jim said. “The creature descended on the tent, ripped it apart and got inside. While it was making a meal of Roland, the woman got out of there and fled along the trail to this spot, where she fell. When it was finished eating, the creature swooped along the trail and lifted her into the air.”

  “Holy shit, is she still alive?” Frasier asked.

  “I doubt it,” Jim said grimly.

  Girard snorted. “Don’t tell me you believe this bullshit, Claire.”

  She narrowed her bright blue eyes and shot him a look. Turning her attention back to Jim and letting the angry look fade, she asked, “How do we find this thing and kill it?”

  “We need to find its lair. It’ll be a cave or a secluded area where it can sleep undisturbed during the day. A place that is hidden from the sun. These creatures are nocturnal; their eyes are adapted to darkness and can’t tolerate daylight.”

  Girard threw up his hands in frustration. “I can’t believe we’re listening to this. We should be focusing on what really happened here. These people were attacked by a bear, not by a winged monster from a fairytale.”

  “The M.E. doesn’t recognize the bite or claw marks,” Frasier reminded him.

  “So we need to get a second opinion. That tent back there and the poor guy inside it were ripped apart by a bear. The girl got away and is wandering around in the woods somewhere. We need to look at the evidence in front of our faces instead of listening to this guy,” he pointed at Jim, “and becoming the laughing stock of the department.”

  “If it was a bear,” Jim said calmly, “where are the tracks? There’s no evidence that a bear was ever here.”

  Girard sighed in frustration and turned on his heels. As he started back along the trail, he shouted back at us, “It’s a bear. When it turns out I’m right, your police consulting days are over, Walker.” He stalked past the officers searching the undergrowth. “When you’re ready to do some real police work, Claire, I’ll be waiting in the car.”

  Frasier took a deep breath, as if trying to calm herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking from Leon, to me, to Jim. “Girard is set in his ways.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Jim said.

  “He’s a good detective,” she said. “He’s just,” —she threw up her arms in frustration—“Girard.” As if that explained everything.

  A radio on her belt beeped. She unclipped it and brought it up to her face. “Frasier.”

  A female voice on the other end said, “We found the girl. She’s a half mile up the trail from your location.”

  “Alive or dead?” Frasier asked.

  “She’s dead.”

  A sadness entered Frasier’s eyes and I wondered if she’d thought she could actually save Jeanette Gautier. “Is she in the same state as the guy?” she said into the radio.

  “It’s difficult to tell. We’re going to need some ladders up here.”

  Frasier frowned. “Ladders? What for?”

  There was a pause and then the female officer said, “The body is at the top of a pine tree.”

  Chapter 4

  Jeanette Gautier lay on her back, balanced on the uppermost branches of a tall pine tree. The police officer had said it was difficult to tell if Jeanette was in the same state as Michael Roland but I could see torn pieces of flesh hanging from the body. I had no doubt that when they got the ladders up to her, they’d find the ribs pulled open and the internal organs gone.

  I looked at Jim. “This is bad.”

  He nodded. “The creature is marking its territory.”

  I turned to Frasier, who was staring up at the woman’s body. “You need to get everyone out of here by nightfall,” I told her. “Tell the park rangers to close off this entire area.”

  She nodded, concern in her eyes. “Do you think it will come back tonight?”

  “It’s possible. The creature’s feeding pattern seems to be once a week but now that it’s started doing this,”—I indicated the bod
y in the tree—“it’s marking its territory and becoming more aggressive.”

  Girard sauntered over to us, hands still in his pockets. Frasier had called him with the news that Jeanette Gautier’s body had been found and now Girard looked like he’d been chewing on a sour lemon.

  “Still think it’s a bear?” Jim asked him.

  Girard’s expression was unreadable behind his shades. He stared at Jim but said nothing.

  I took Jim and Leon to one side and said, “We have more chance of finding this thing now that it’s staked a claim to this area. Its lair must be somewhere around here.”

  Jim nodded. “We can study the maps I have at the house and look for the most likely place the creature is holed up. Then, we can hunt it during daylight tomorrow.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said. Nightwings were much easier to kill during the day than at night.

  We walked back along the trail to the cars. “Frasier seems open-minded,” I said to Jim, “but her partner’s an asshole.”

  “Yeah, grade-A,” he said. “Claire is good people, though. I sometimes go fishing with her husband. Nice guy. Claire has seen enough weird stuff that she doesn’t dismiss anything out of hand. Girard is stubborn as a mule and has a nasty streak too. He wouldn’t admit this was a nightwing attack even if we brought the body to the police station and put it on his desk.”

  “Is anybody going to tell me what a nightwing is?” Leon asked when we were out of earshot of the police.

  “A nightwing isn’t a specific creature,” I told him. “It’s a classification used to describe a winged preternatural being that flies and hunts at night. Within that class, there are many different creatures. Usually, nightwings stay hidden and only feed occasionally so they go unnoticed but every now and then, there are sightings and the media jumps on it. There was a nightwing in West Virginia in the sixties that became known as the Mothman. There were some sightings in Chile a few years ago of a flying monster that was killing cattle at night. Eventually, the creature disappeared, meaning it probably left the area for somewhere more quiet, away from humans.

  “The creature that killed Roland and Gautier is much more aggressive than usual. Taking two victims like that and staking its territory isn’t typical nightwing behavior.”

  “Which is why we should find out exactly what we’re dealing with,” Jim said.

  “I guess I could call Felicity,” I said. “She can check the database when she gets a chance.”

  “That would be useful,” Jim said.

  We reached the cars and I realized how quickly it was getting dark. Back on the trail, I’d assumed some of the gloom was due to being beneath the tree canopy but now that we were back at the road, I could see the sky becoming a deep blue shot through with blood-red streaks.

  “Are you guys getting the food?” Jim asked as he opened the door of his Jeep.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, climbing into the Explorer. “We’ll see you at your place. Get the beers ready.” I waited for Leon to get in before I backed out onto the road and followed Jim back to the West Gate and along Highway 60.

  Before we reached Huntsville, Jim turned off the highway and headed north toward his home. I drove into town and parked outside a Chinese restaurant.

  “I’ll get this,” Leon said, getting out of the car and going into the restaurant.

  I got out and leaned against the Explorer while I called Felicity. The sky was almost fully dark now and I hoped Frasier had gotten everyone off that trail. I’d never heard of a nightwing attacking a large group of people but the creature in the park seemed to be playing by its own rules. And it would be easy for a police officer or EMT crew member to wander away from the others in the darkness and find themselves torn apart by the lurking monster.

  The call took a while to connect, probably because it was long distance, and when Felicity finally answered, her voice sounded faint and faraway. “Alec, is that you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” I said. “How are you?” I immediately felt guilty for not calling her sooner. I’d wanted to give her some space to deal with her family problems but maybe it would’ve been better if I’d called at least once to see how she was doing.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Things are settling down a bit. Dad has come home from the hospital and Mum and I are fussing around him so much, I think he’ll be glad when I leave. I can come back to work whenever you need me. Is that why you’re calling? Is there a case?”

  “There’s a case,” I said, “but you don’t need to jump on the next plane over here or anything. I’m in Canada, working a case with Jim Walker. Leon’s here too.”

  “Canada? Who’s running the office? What if we get some new clients in Dearmont?”

  “Don’t worry about it. The office phone is forwarded to my cell. Nobody’s called and I should only be here for a few days anyway. This case is pretty straightforward. There’s a nightwing killing people up here so we’re going to find its lair and deal with it.”

  “A nightwing? What type?”

  “We don’t know yet. I was wondering if you’d take a look at the Society database and see if you can narrow it down?”

  “Of course. What information do you have?” She was in work mode immediately.

  “Well, it seems to be feeding once a week, on human internal organs. It’s living in a forested area with lakes and rivers. And it’s marking its territory by placing the bodies of its victims in trees.”

  “Was that a male or female victim? And what type of tree was it?”

  “Female. And the tree was a red pine.”

  “All right, I’ll look into it.”

  “Call me if you find anything, no matter what time it is. In fact, I just realized, it must be pretty late there. Did I wake you?”

  “It’s fine. I’ll call you as soon as I find out exactly what you’re dealing with.”

  “Thanks, Felicity.”

  “And, Alec…” She paused.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Please be careful.”

  “Always. I’ll talk to you later. Goodnight.” I ended the call.

  A couple minutes later, Leon came out of the restaurant, laden down with two boxes full of food containers.

  “Did you leave any food for the other customers?” I asked him, taking one of the boxes and putting it into the back of the Explorer.

  “I wasn’t sure what everyone likes so I got some of everything,” he said.

  “Well, it smells good,” I told him. The last thing I’d eaten was a small bag of dill pickle potato chips in Toronto and that had been hours ago.

  As we took the highway out of Huntsville and then got onto the road that led to Jim’s house, I looked out of the windshield at the dark trees in the distance.

  Somewhere out there was a monster. If we didn’t stop it, it would take more innocent lives.

  I couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Chapter 5

  Jim’s house was north of Huntsville, close to Arrowhead Provincial Park, and situated on a small lake where Jim and I had spent many hours fishing from his canoe and swimming out to the wooden raft floating fifty feet from the shore. We used to spend hours sitting in the sun by the lake and talking about our cases.

  The house was rustic-looking, built in the Adirondack style from wood and stone, with rugged tree trunks used as the support pillars for the porch that overlooked the lake. Built on the expanse of grass that led down to the water was a Muskoka granite barbecue that Jim used to cook almost all his meals during the spring and summer months. We’d discussed many cases in front of that barbecue, drinking beer and figuring out how to save the world from some nasty or other, while burgers sizzled on the grill.

  “Nice place,” Leon said as I parked next to Jim’s Jeep at the side of the house. “A little rustic, maybe.”

  “Leon, you live in an ultra-modern mansion made of steel and glass. The Sydney Opera House probably looks rustic to you.”

  We got out of the car and took a box each of t
he Chinese food out of the back before carrying them across the grass and setting them down on the picnic table by the barbecue.

  Then we went back to the car and took out our cases, setting them down on the deck.

  “Hey, I thought you guys would never get here.” Jim came out of the house with a white plastic cooler and placed it on the ground next to the table.

  “Leon bought the entire menu,” I told Jim.

  “Not quite,” Leon said. “I got a variety of things because I didn’t know what you guys like.”

  “If it’s food, I like it,” Jim said, inspecting the contents of the cardboard boxes. “I’ll get some plates.” He disappeared back into the house and returned a few seconds later with plates, dishes, forks, and chopsticks wrapped in paper packets.

  We unloaded the boxes and took a plate each, loading them with whatever looked and smelled good. Everything looked and smelled good so my plate ended up being piled high with chicken chop suey, fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, and Szechuan pork. I unwrapped a set of chopsticks, wondering what to taste first.

  Jim took three bottles of Molson Canadian from the cooler and handed them out. The ice-cold bottles were covered in droplets of condensation.

  When we were done eating and Jim had squirreled away the leftovers into his fridge, he brought out a map of the area and laid it on the table. Two small circles had been drawn on the map in red marker and now Jim added a third on the trail where we had found Michael Roland and Jeanette Gautier.

  I noticed a pattern immediately. “It’s moving closer to the highway. The first kill was deeper in the woods, the second a little closer to the main road, and the third even closer.”

  Jim nodded. “It’s getting bolder. This isn’t the usual behavior of a nightwing. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Could somebody be controlling it?” I asked, thinking out loud.

  “If it was being controlled by magic, the crystal shard would have detected something,” Jim said.

  Using my finger, I traced a line from the most recent red circle, back to the one from a week ago, and back to the scene of the first murder. From there, I continued in the same direction until I hit a place on the map that was heavily-wooded, with a small lake nearby, and far away from the hiking trails. “What’s this area like?” I asked Jim.