Manhunter

Gabe’s jaw tightened and his head began to pound.

Shaking Constable Donovan’s hand, he tried to remind himself he’d wanted this. He’d asked for this remote post.

He’d needed to get out from under the never-ending media scrutiny, away from Gia’s family, his own relatives. Away from his own overwhelming burden of guilt.

He’d been through the critical incident stress debriefings, through the private specialists, been through the physical therapy, the hearings, the protracted internal investigation, his every action examined and requestioned.

And his force had stood by him. They all said he’d done what any good cop would have done.

Trouble was, Gabe didn’t believe it.

He should have guessed when they’d had no response from a member on a supposedly routine call to a disturbance at a Quonset hut on a farm on the outskirts of town that it could be a trap. There had been claims the Bush Man had recently been seen in the wilderness around town, but although the Williams Lake detachment was put on alert, these sorts of sightings were not unusual. The Bush Man had achieved near-mythical status, and civilians had been sighting him in the wilds from Saskatoon to Prince Rupert since his first murder.

Kurtz Steiger, a consummate survivalist and U.S. Special Forces soldier trained in unconventional warfare behind enemy lines, had been defying a federal manhunt in the Canadian wilderness for almost three years following his escape from U.S. court martial for heinous war crimes in the Middle East and Africa.

He’d fled north into the Canadian Rockies where he’d begun killing and torturing again—living for the thrill of the hunt, picking hunters off in the woods, raping and terrorizing campers and hikers, breaking into remote cottages, and living off the land.

The military had been called in, and people in rural towns lived in mounting fear as the notorious killer continued to elude and taunt law enforcement.

But then the Bush Man had simply disappeared, gone quiet after a horrific killing spree near Grande Cache north of Jasper. People speculated that he’d fled over the Rockies, crossing the Cariboo Mountains and then perhaps gone down to Bowron Lake, or Wells Gray Provincial Park. But the terrain was hostile, and talk turned to suggestions he might finally have perished.

Until a hunter had gone missing near Horsefly.

There was no evidence that the hunter had been killed, but the rumors started again. With them came fear. And the expected sightings.

A logger said he thought he may have picked up the Bush Man hitching between Quesnel and Williams Lake. Two German hikers believed they’d glimpsed him north of town. Again, nothing was substantiated, but Mounties in the region were put on alert.

Then came the call to the Quonset hut. Two constables responded, went radio silent.

In the teeth of an unseasonably early snowstorm, darkness falling, the Williams Lake staff sergeant had dispatched every member at his disposal, including Gabe, his operations sergeant, while he’d called in the Emergency Response Team—the Mountie SWAT equivalent—from Prince George. The military was also put on standby.

But the blizzard drove down. The ERT guys were socked in, hours away, choppers grounded. And Gabe, as the senior officer on site, had led his members straight into an ambush in the middle of whiteout.

It had been orchestrated by Kurtz Steiger. He had one officer and one civilian down inside, and one constable hostage.

Gabe was backed into a corner, with no help in sight for hours, perhaps days.

And somehow the bastard knew.

He knew that Gia belonged to him.

He’d been playing them all, lurking around town for God knew how long, watching, learning, searching for his next thrill, and the ambush was it.

Gabe should have done anything but send Gia round the back of the Quonset hut with a young constable, where the Bush Man had come barreling out, blazing a pump-action shotgun as the hut had exploded in a ball of fire behind him.

Steiger had felled Gia and Gabe’s constable, taking time to get down and look into Gia’s eyes as she died in the snow while the other officers, stunned by the explosion, battled through the blaze to find their fallen comrades and the civilian victim.

Steiger had then fled into the woods on a snowmobile.

Blinded by rage and adrenaline, Gabe had given chase, finally running him down and wounding him. In the bloody battle that had ensued, Steiger had managed to crush Gabe’s leg by pinning him between the snowmobile and a tree before Gabe tasered him several times. Steiger, passing in and out of consciousness, had looked directly into Gabe’s eyes, and smiled, told him that he’d enjoyed watching Gia die. Gabe had been about to slit the bastard’s throat with his own hunting knife just as one of his corporals arrived on scene, saving him from an act that would have cost him his badge had there been a witness. The notorious Bush Man was finally taken into custody.

But the cost was high. And personal.

The RCMP, while a paramilitary organization, was different from the military in one vital sense. Soldiers were trained to take life. But a Mountie lived and breathed to preserve life. Lethal force was only used as a last resort, and only to protect life under immediate threat. This was so powerfully ingrained in the Mountie psyche that when things turned violent—when people got killed—it was close to impossible to get over.

Especially when the lives lost were those of fellow members. Especially when that fellow member was your fiancée.

And her death was your fault.

But the internal investigation had cleared Gabe. The metal pin in his leg didn’t hurt so badly anymore, and physical therapy had helped him walk again. The funerals in Ottawa were long over, and the shrinks had okayed Gabe for active service.

But they didn’t know.

They didn’t know how close Gabe had come to killing Steiger even once the bastard had been incapacitated. They didn’t know that Gabe didn’t trust himself with his own gun anymore.

He’d never told the psychologists how quickly his rage flared now. How he had to bite down to stop clearing leather with his 9 mm. That he’d become his own worst enemy.

Perhaps he should have told them, but they would have sidelined him. And he’d needed to work to stay half-sane.

But until he figured some things out, Gabe thought it best to go work someplace where he could lie low, where the crime rate was virtually zero.

Where he couldn’t goddamn hurt anyone else.

Like Black Arrow Falls.

A deeply buried part of Gabe figured he might just disappear up here. Walk into the wilderness with a fishing rod, maybe dissolve into the fabric of the mountains. Never come back. Forcing himself to embrace living was going to be his ultimate test.

“So this is the Black Arrow Falls detachment,” Donovan was saying as he wheeled the RCMP vehicle into a gravel parking lot behind a rustic log building atop which a red-and-white Canadian flag flapped in the warm wind.

Gabe struggled to focus as he followed Donovan into the building.

His sole absolution was that he’d put Steiger behind bars.

It was the only way he could justify his sacrifices. The only way he could accept the loss of Gia’s life, the other officers’ lives.

Steiger would not kill again.

“And this is Rosie Netro’s desk,” said Donovan, showing Gabe into the reception area of the tiny RCMP detachment. It was a far cry from where he’d worked in the city. Even Williams Lake was sophisticated compared to this.

“Rosie’s one of our two civilian clerks who handle dispatch and admin. She’s off-duty now, usually works nine to five weekdays. Tabitha Charlie is our weekend dispatcher, a fairly recent addition, but she’s off on maternity leave.” Donovan smiled his clean, earnest smile in his square jaw. “Baby should be along any day now.”

Donovan waited for a reaction from Gabe, some platitude. A smile, a nod, perhaps.

Gabe registered it was a great thing, a birth. But he couldn’t seem to make himself respond.

His reaction was buried down somewhere in his repertoire of expected and acceptable social behaviors, but he didn’t have the inclination to set it free. Emotional dissonance, the shrinks had called it.

It had grown out of his habit of compartmentalizing things as a homicide cop, and now he seemed to have locked himself down permanently somewhere inside. It was the only way he’d gotten through this past year. It had kept him alive. But it sure as hell wasn’t living.

Donovan turned his eyes away, a subtle but visible shift in his demeanor. “And this is where we all sit. Constable Annie Lavalle at that desk over there. That’s my station,” he pointed. “And that’s Constable Stan Huong’s desk, and that station by the window will be for the new member, Cade McKenzie. His transfer comes through in a couple of months.”

“Where are Lavalle and Huong now?” Gabe asked, surveying the mini-bullpen.

“Huong’s on compassionate leave. His mother passed away. We expect him back in two weeks. Lavalle is attending a court case in Whitehorse—hunting violation. She was called to testify. It’s her first case. She’s fresh out of Depot Division.”

A new recruit straight out of the academy. Gabe didn’t like the sense of responsibility that gave him. Call him chauvinist, but he didn’t want to put another woman in jeopardy. Ever. It went against his grain as much as it was drummed home to him that they were all equal in the force. He was a born protector. That’s what had given him the black eyes and broken arm at school when he’d stood up in defense of his kid sister and her friends.

It’s what had made him a good cop.

“Name like Lavalle—she Québécoise?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Donovan. “Accent and feisty temper to match.”

Gabe grunted. At least there was little to threaten young Constable Annie Lavalle up here in Black Arrow Falls. Apart from wild animals and his own morbidity. He’d have to be careful not to spread the poison—it wasn’t fair to these young officers.

“Lockup’s down this way.” Donovan led Gabe down a hallway. “Interview room is in there, evidence and equipment room over here on the right.” He unlocked and swung open a door, revealing shelves with snowmobile helmets, two satellite phones, and other equipment on the left, racks for rifles and shotguns down the centre, and shelves with evidence bags near the back.

“And this is the gym.” Donovan squared his shoulders as he opened another door into a small square room furnished with rudimentary weights, a treadmill, and a bike.

It was painted stark white, with a small window. Like a cell. Gabe could imagine snowdrifts piled so high they covered that tiny window. A small fist of tension curled in his stomach. Along with it came a tingle of claustrophobia.

This was going to be tougher than he thought.

This was going to be his prison, his self-inflicted punishment for what went wrong that day.

He wondered now, as he stared at the small room, if he’d ever find his way back, or if Black Arrow Falls really was the end of his road, his permanent rock bottom.

“And this here is your office,” Donovan said, moving back into the main room and opening a door into a partitioned-off area. The fist in Gabe’s gut curled tighter.

A large window looked out over the desks in the mini-bullpen, while another offered a view out the back of the building over a few tired clapboard houses, leafless scrub, and mountainous wilderness beyond.

He stared silently at the cramped alcove with its ancient computer and regulation desk, his blood beginning to thump steadily in his veins.

“Look,” said Donovan suddenly, his cheeks reddening slightly as he spoke. “For the record, I think you made the right decision that day. You got the Bush Man.”

“I lost four members and a civilian.”

Donovan’s cheeks burned redder. Gabe wasn’t making it easier for the guy, but his will to ease things for his young constable was buried somewhere inside him, too.

Donovan cleared his throat, his eyes flicking away. “I…should finish showing you around.”

“Right.”

He cleared his throat nervously again. “As you know, there are no telephone landlines into Black Arrow Falls,” he said.

Gabe didn’t know. Didn’t really care, either. He hadn’t bothered to read up on his new detachment beyond the mere basics. The posting had come fast once he’d put in the request. He’d taken it just as fast.

“Phone service and high-speed Internet are provided to the town via satellite dish,” Donovan was saying. “The dish picks up the signal, feeds it to individual homes and businesses via local landline. We have our own sat dish and radio antennae mounted on the detachment building. There’s a repeater on a hill some miles out, so radio range is fair, but we take a sat phone to communicate with dispatch when we need to head into the bush for any distance.”

“Power?”

“Supplied by Yukon Electrical via a diesel-generating plant. Diesel is flown in. Same with regular gas. The Black Arrow Nation runs the gasoline outlet. The Northern Store across the street sells groceries, some dry goods, and provides mail pickup. Mail plane flies in once a week, so does passenger and delivery service with Air North. We have a resident doctor now and two nurses at the community health clinic. The clinic has videoconferencing facilities. Dentist flies in once a month.” He snorted. “Most months.”

“How long you been here, Constable?” Gabe asked suddenly.

“Five months, sir.”

“Your first posting?”

“Second. I was in Faro for two years. I like the north, Sergeant.”

Gabe inhaled deeply, reaching for patience. “So it’s just you and me for now, then, Constable?”

“And Rosie.”

“Yeah.” And Rosie. Gabe walked over to the wide window cut into rough-hewn log walls. It looked out over the dusty main street.

“It’s not like much happens up here from fall into winter,” Donovan offered. “Apart from the odd domestic or drunk disturbance.”

That’s what ate at Gabe.

Seventeen years had come to this?

“And there was the grizzly attack last week,” he said. “That caused a bit of a stir. The file is on your desk.”

Gabe wasn’t listening, his attention suddenly snared by the woman striding down the road with the hunting rifle slung across her back and a troop of wolf dogs following in her wake.

Silver.

She’d cleaned up, and be damned if she didn’t look even more alluring.

Wearing a denim jacket over a white cotton dress that skimmed her tall moccasin-style boots, her long black hair had been released from its braid and swung loose across her back, reaching almost to her butt.

Donovan came to his side. “That’s Silver Karvonen. She’s the tracker the conservation office contracted to hunt the man killer. Like I said, file is on your desk.”

Gabe’s eyes shot to Donovan. “Man killer?”

“Well.” The constable cleared his throat again, “The grizz didn’t actually kill the guy, but the CO said he would have if the hunter hadn’t rolled down into the ravine. Bear probably has a taste for human blood now.”

Gabe’s pulse accelerated slightly. “That your opinion or the CO’s?”

He flushed again. “Well, mine, actually, Sergeant.”

Gabe glanced back at Silver making her way toward the general store. He hadn’t been this interested in anything for a long, long time. “You say she’s a tracker?”

“One of the best north of 60. Does man tracking, too. They fly her out for some of the real tough search-and-rescue missions, mostly across the North, and especially if there are kids involved. She has a real thing for the lost children. She just won’t give up if there’s a minor missing.”

Intrigue stirred something to life inside him.

“Otherwise she manages the Old Moose Lodge during the summer months for an outfitter based out of Whitehorse. The Old Moose property lies just beyond the town boundaries on the shores of Natchako Lake, where she has a cabin. The outfitters own the hunting concession up here,” he said. “And Silver occasionally guides parties who fly in and pay megabucks for the big game.”

Gabe watched Silver order her wolf pack to sit before climbing the old wooden stairs of the Northern Store across the street. Gabe knew the population of Black Arrow Falls was 90 percent Black Arrow Gwitchin, a very small subgroup of the Gwitchin Nation that stretched across the Canadian North and into Alaska, but Silver had gotten those laser-blue eyes from somewhere else.

“Karvonen,” he said quietly, contemplating the woman vanishing through the store door. “That’s not a local name.”

“Finnish. Her mother was Black Arrow Gwitchin, but her father was apparently some crazy maverick prospector from Finland. Most of the prospectors who came up this way were looking for Yukon gold. They called him The Finn, tell me he came looking for silver.”

“He ever make a strike?”

“No, but he found a wife and had a kid. That’s where she got her name, Silver.”

They all come looking for something. Sometimes they don’t know what it is.

Gabe almost smiled. So, the prospector got what he came for. He just didn’t know it was a family he’d been seeking.

“You up on the local gossip, eh, Constable?”

Donovan shrugged, a grin sneaking across his face, and Gabe felt himself warming to the guy in spite of himself.

But before Donovan could say anything more, the phone on the desk in Gabe’s tiny office rang, startling him back to his present predicament.

Donovan jerked his head toward it. “Your direct line, Sergeant. Goes straight through and into voice mail if Rosie’s not on duty.”

Gabe strode into his new cell, snatched the receiver up to his ear. “Caruso,” he barked.

“Gabe, it’s Tom.”

His RCMP pal from Surrey homicide.

“Tom? How—”

“Where in hell have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”

“Cell reception out here is a nonexistent luxury.”

“You see the news?”

Something inside Gabe quieted at the tone in Tom’s voice. “What news?” he said softly.

“The Bush Man—he’s on the loose. Kurtz bloody Steiger busted out of max security during the storm last night.”

Chapter 3

Gabe’s head began to buzz. His fist tightened around the handset.

“How?” he said, barely audibly. “How in hell did he get out?”

“Floodwater was seeping into the underground electrical systems at Kent Institution with this deluge we’ve been having,” said Tom. “Correctional services was sandbagging like crazy while putting together contingency plans to transfer inmates to the Mountain Institution if things got worse.”

Gabe could picture it. Kent was in the low-lying area of the Agassiz delta. The neighboring Mountain Institution was on slightly higher ground.

“The water levels rose too fast. Power shorted, backup generator blew as they were trying to switch over. Wardens had to hustle inmates out in the dark.”

Gabe’s knuckles turned bone-white as he struggled to grasp what he was hearing. Steiger was being held in that institution while lawyers wrangled over his extradition and jurisdictional issues. He vaguely noted Donovan staring at him through the glass. “Go on,” Gabe said, words like gravel in his throat.

“Steiger took advantage of the outage, stabbed an inmate with a spoon, it looks like. Sparked a riot in pitch blackness. Two wardens are dead, several others in critical condition. The bastard actually stripped one, put on his uniform, and drove the prison van right out of the main gates of the pen. No one saw it coming—they thought he was one of their own. Steiger dumped the van off the highway near Manning Park. Looks like he ducked into wilderness there, heading south for the U.S. border.”

“With a U.S. court martial hanging over his head?”

“Borders don’t matter to that guy.”

No. Everything mattered to Kurtz Steiger. Gabe knew him too well now. He’d studied—memorized—everything the RCMP criminal investigative analysts had come up with. He’d looked right into the monster’s eyes himself that snowy night in the woods. He’d almost taken his life. Gabe pinched the bridge of his nose.

“It’s all over the news,” said Tom. “I…thought you might have heard.”

“I’m in the bush, Thomas. North of bloody nowhere.”

“The CBC is working up a feature that will air during their regular news slot tonight. I…I wanted to be sure you knew. They’ll probably bring up…Gia, and all that.”

An inexplicable emotion welled up through Gabe’s chest and burned into his eyes. He felt so damn defeated.

Having Steiger behind bars was his way of rationalizing Gia’s murder. And the loss of those officers’ lives. It was his sole foundation for going forward.

Now it was gone.

He sank down, leaning against his tiny new desk. “Where are they looking for him?” he asked quietly.

“They’ve got a major manhunt going down in Manning Park along the U.S. border. Dogs, choppers, military, the works. They’re expanding the search over the border into Washington state with the cooperation of U.S. authorities.”

“Why?”

A puzzled silence hung for a moment. “That’s where his trail leads.”

“Steiger doesn’t leave a trail,” Gabe said even more quietly. “Not unless he wants you to find it.”

Tom paused. “They’ve got him this time, Caruso. He was shot in the prison riot. He left a ton of blood in that van. He’s injured and on the run. The dogs are on him.”

“Right,” said Gabe. Kurtz Steiger could survive anything. It’s what he did. Survive. And kill.

“The guy is not superhuman, Gabe. They figure they’ll have him in a matter of hours.”

“Right,” he said again.

Silence hung for several beats. “Is everything okay up there?”

Up there.

It sounded like something Gabe’s Roman Catholic mother would say in reference to limbo—that peculiar place where doomed souls were destined to hang between hell and heaven for eternity.

“I’m fine,” Gabe lied. “You’ll keep me updated, Tom? I…I’m kind of out of the loop right now, and…I’d like to know.”

“Hey, it’s why I called, buddy.”

Gabe hung up, his knuckles bloodless. He flexed his fingers, stared at his hands, then looked up at Donovan who’d moved into the doorway.

“He got out,” said Gabe. “The Bush Man.”

Donovan’s features were grave. “I gathered.”

Gabe launched to his feet suddenly, pushing off his desk. “Is there a television set anywhere in this town?”

Donovan eyed him steadily. “We have Internet. You can get the news on—”

“I want a television. I want to see the CBC feature airing on Steiger tonight.”

And he wanted a beer. No, a couple of beers. He wanted to drown himself in whiskey—and this was a dry town.

“Mae Anne’s diner has TV. She gets the two Yukon channels. There are satellite systems in private homes and one at the Old Moose Hunting Lodge, which is outside the town boundary. They serve a pretty decent meal there, too.”

Gabe checked his watch as he stalked through the reception area. Shoving the door open, he stepped out onto the small log porch that fronted the detachment building. He needed air. What he got was a surprise.

The sinking sun had brushed the rugged, snow-capped massifs with a soft peach alpenglow, and the air had turned heavy and cool. Gabe drank it down hungrily as he braced his hands on the wood balcony, heart thudding in his chest. It was so beautiful it had shocked his mind clean for a moment.

“Sergeant?” Donovan said from just inside the door.

Gabe tightened his hands on the balustrade. “What is it, Donovan?” he said quietly, without looking at the man.

“I know you’re technically not on duty until tomorrow, but Chief Peters at the band office is expecting you, and I…uh…mentioned you might come around and meet with him this evening.”

Black Arrow Nation Chief Harry Peters functioned as a small-town mayor would. His band had contracted the RCMP to police their community, and, as the new sergeant in town, Gabe would need to liaise with Peters in the same way a top cop would work with any local mayor and council.