Missing in the Dark by Bernadette Calonego

Author:Bernadette Calonego [Calonego, Bernadette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

40

Detective Sergeant Calista Gates

Kamloops

January 1

“Why did you go up the logging road?”

Sergeant Jayakody asks me that for the second time. He uses the same method I do. I ask a question and ask it again later because you might get a different answer. I try to disguise my impatience. I’m just too overwhelmed. Jayakody doesn’t look exactly fresh either.

The station seems like a beehive compared to St. Anthony. I hear agitated voices from the corridor although the office door is shut. It’s not every day the Mounties in Kamloops have a possible abduction on their hands that ends with a potential murder. Jayakody must also be dumbfounded that two police officers from Vancouver, of all places, discovered Tilly Fallon on New Year’s Day. Something the Kamloops police, Search and Rescue, and many volunteers could not do despite intensely searching for two-and-a-half weeks. I’d be astonished, too, if I were in his shoes.

“The idea came to me out of the blue,” I reply.

I can’t get Tilly Fallon’s white face out of my mind. Did she have to suffer much? How long was she alone in the dark? Was she already dead by the time she was tied up? Who did this to her? Why did someone tie her to a tree—exactly like Becca back then? And why did I have to be the one to find her?

I didn’t want to leave Tilly Fallon behind in the cold. It was Gabe who went for the RCMP team in Kamloops since we had no reception in the forest. Fred kept an eye on me until they arrived because my whole body was shivering. Even while our initial statements were being taken, I couldn’t take my eyes off the dead woman. As if she could give me an answer. Why? Why now? Why here?

I’m alone with Jayakody in the room. There’s a picture of the highest-ranking RCMP woman in Canada on the wall. The commissioner. Fred is probably being interrogated in the next room. And there will surely be other persons brought in whom I don’t know. I can’t let myself be distracted; I must concentrate on Jayakody’s questions. There’s still daylight, but it’s not very bright out. The heat in the building makes me sleepy. My brain’s swimming in a pea-soup fog. I reach again for the glass of water in front of me.

“I wanted to see how the perpetrator dragged Becca Heyer to the place where she was found,” I explain, exhausted. “I can imagine that he brought her from the logging road through the woods to near the White Hammer Trail.”

“Tilly Fallon was tied to a tree. Do you see a connection with Becca Heyer, who was also bound to a tree?”

I’d expected this question much earlier. It’s circling in an endless loop in my head. The two places of discovery are probably not even two kilometers apart. On the other hand, there are twenty-three years between them.

“To my mind, the perpetrator did it intentionally, and I think he’s trying to send us a message.

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