Chapter One
CHAPTER ONE
A fist pounds on our chalet door. I lift my head to squint at the clock. 1:16.
A knock in the wee hours of the morning is never good.
Beside me, Dalton makes a noise that could be a curse or could just be a still-half-asleep grunt.
“I’ll go see what it is,” I say, patting his arm as I rise.
He starts making another sound, one that might be sleepy acceptance. Then he bolts upright.
“No!” he says, as if I’ve suggested running into a burning building. “You stay. I’ve got this.”
“I’m already out of bed.”
“Then get back in it.”
In the moonlight I can see Storm, our Newfoundland, look from one of us to the other. Then she sighs.
“Sorry, pup,” I say, patting her with my foot. “He’s a little weird these days. I have no idea why.”
“For the same reason you’re petting the dog with your foot instead of bending down to use your hand.” Dalton points at the cause of my inability to bend—my eight-month-pregnant belly. Which, yes, is the same reason he’s leaping out of bed to answer the door instead of just gratefully staying where it’s warm.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Even April’s long list of ‘things Casey can’t do’ does not include answering doors.”
“Yeah, but if it doesn’t include ‘going down the stairs in the middle of the night,’ it should.”
I could point out that going down a flight of stairs while sleepy is always dangerous, and no more so when heavily pregnant, but when we started this journey, I knew I was going to have to deal with Dalton’s protective streak. Or, more accurately, deal with him using my pregnancy as an excuse to indulge his protective streak.
Also, granted, it’s not purely indulgence. Old damage to my uterus means I could have issues. In eight months, I’ve had two scares, one where I’d been certain I’d miscarry, and one a month ago, where there was some concern I’d gone into early labor. Being seven months along meant it would have been a premature birth. Not a huge problem… if I were living down south with access to proper preemie care.
Dalton had been ready to take me to Vancouver so we could spend my last two months in an apartment, preferably one close enough to a hospital that he could carry me there in an emergency. My sister had been on his side… because as the local doctor, she’s the one who’d need to deal with premature birth, and she’s a neurosurgeon, not an obstetrician. Fortunately, my actual obstetrician convinced them both that I was fine where I was. In an emergency, Dalton could fly me to Whitehorse himself and she would come up to the hospital there.
So I understand if he’s fussing over me walking down the stairs. It isn’t as if we intentionally put ourselves in this position. It was an accidental pregnancy that we decided to continue while knowing the risks. And I decided to continue it while knowing he was going to freak out if anything went wrong, including false alarms.
Another pound on the door below.
“Stay here,” Dalton says, pointing at the bed.
When I glower, he says, “Keep her here,” to Storm. Then he leaves, and Storm heaves to her feet, walks three paces, and collapses in the doorway.
I turn my glower on her. “Traitor.”
She only lets out a slobbery sigh and watches me with all the patience of Nana in Peter Pan. Having a Newfoundland means I understand why Barrie chose one for his canine nanny. She’s the sweetest and most patient dog imaginable, but also, if she’s in that doorway, I am not getting out of this room.
Below, Dalton answers the front door.
“We have a problem,” a voice says. “I know you aren’t going to want Casey getting up at this hour, but I think she needs to take this one.”
I scramble to get ready without even hearing my husband’s probably profane response. It isn’t that the caller sounds panicked or even stressed. The voice is perfectly calm with just the right hint of apology.
If I didn’t know the speaker, I’d think that tone meant a very minor problem, an inconvenience and an annoyance that unfortunately did require my personal touch… such as our deputy being unable to access the gun locker because baby brain meant I misplaced the key again.
The speaker, though, is Sebastian.
Sebastian had been our youngest resident in Rockton, and at twenty-two, he’s still the youngest adult resident in Haven’s Rock. He came to Rockton because he’s too infamous to live a normal life down south. At the age of eleven he killed his parents. He had his reasons, but no court would consider them a defense. If he had a defense, it’s that he was an undiagnosed sociopath who thought this seemed a valid solution to the problem of rich parents who wouldn’t let him attend school because it interfered with their social calendar. He served his time and while serving it, he dealt with his diagnosis and continues to deal with it. He’s not a serial killer. He has no interest in hurting anyone. He just needed to understand that murder is not a valid problem-solving strategy.
All this means it’s really hard to rattle Sebastian. Maybe impossible. He could stumble over a dead body, and unless it’s someone he cares about, his response would be purely practical. Go find someone to deal with it.
I dress and tell Storm to move. Her eyes roll up to meet mine, her disapproval clear, but she’s technically my dog, and she knows it. She lumbers to her feet and down the stairs.
I expect Dalton to spot her and tell me he can handle this, but before Storm’s even down the stairs, he’s at the bottom, looking up, his expression grim.
“You do need to handle this,” he says.
“What happened?”
Sebastian pops in behind him. “Kendra was attacked. She’s fine—unhurt, that is. But it seems… Well, it looks as if someone dosed her in the Roc and dragged her into the woods.”
“Dragged—”
He lifts his hands. “They didn’t do anything to her. She got away in time. But, yeah, that’s why I, uh, thought you should come. Because it looks as if they planned to…”
He trails off, and genuine emotion flashes over his face. He likes Kendra, and that flash is undiluted anger. He reins it in fast.
“I thought of going after them, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. So I helped Kendra instead.”
“Thank you. Where is she?”
“At the clinic with your sister.”
Sexual assault had always been a serious concern in Rockton. The population had been three-quarters male with no couples allowed, and as law enforcement, we’d been dealing with the potentially explosive situation of women escaping victimization and men who could be victimizers snuck in under a cover story. Explosive and completely unacceptable, but Dalton’s only option had been solid policing and the strictest of penalties. Oh, and there was a brothel—women residents were allowed to sell sex. Isabel and I had endless disagreements over that, the feminist politics of consensual sex work versus the fact that it presupposed men needed that outlet or there’d be trouble. Yep, it was complicated.
Haven’s Rock has no sex trade. Unless you count Gunnar, but he’s free, so there’s no “trade” involved. We allow couples, and we have a mixed group of men and women and sexual orientations, so… Well, if you want sex and you aren’t an asshole about it, you can probably get it, especially if you’re a straight woman because… Gunnar.
Now, as a cop, I’m the first to say that sexual assault is not always about sex. The type that is about sex is the sort that involves coercion and dubious consent, where someone has manipulated a situation to get what they want. Drugging a woman in the Roc could be that sort or it could be the other sort, where it’s about control and violence.
Coercion sexual assault is the most likely scenario, whether it’s Rockton or Haven’s Rock. One would hope that anyone driven to drag a resident into the forest would realize he was going to get caught. We have seventy people in Haven’s Rock and a professional police force of three.
But if you’ve convinced yourself that you just “talked her into it,” you don’t see a crime. Even if drugs are involved, it’s their word against yours, and besides, you didn’t give them any drugs and so you thought it was consensual sex. Really.
If Kendra was attacked and possibly dosed, there is no way I’m turning this over to Dalton and Anders, as I have—grudgingly—with most of my late-pregnancy workload. I absolutely trust both of them to treat it with all due gravity and respect, and if I weren’t here, they could handle it. But I am here.
The clinic front door is unlocked. That’s the only way I know April is inside, because the windows are shuttered, blinds drawn. To avoid giving the town away at night, all of the buildings have been designed to be as close to dark as possible, even if someone has a light on, because in the dead of winter, you can’t expect people to be in bed by four when the sun sets.
I still tap on the door as I open it. Inside, it remains dark, meaning my sister unlocked the front door but didn’t turn on the waiting-area light. I don’t make it to the next door before it’s yanked open.
The first time Dalton ever saw April, he knew she was my sister. Of course, siblings often resemble each other. It’s genetics. But I grew up hearing how different we looked, and I realize now that what people really meant was that I have distinctive features that favor our Chinese-Filipino mother, and April does not, and by “distinctive features” I really mean just eye shape and skin tone. It only takes that, though, for me to look Asian and her to look white.
Get beyond that, and it’s very obvious that we’re sisters, with the same straight dark hair, heart-shaped face and cheekbones. But those differences are one of many things that drove a wedge between us growing up, the other main one being April’s previously undiagnosed place on the autism spectrum.
April steps out, flipping on the light and closing the door as she glares at me. “What are you doing here?”
I make a show of looking around. “Have I lost clinic-visit privileges? Or sister-visit privileges?”
“Both if it’s one in the morning. I thought Eric was handling all this for you.” Her glare moves to my shoulder and hardens to annoyance when Dalton isn’t there to receive it. The fact that she’s glaring at all tells me she’s out of sorts. When it comes to irritating April, Dalton gets the free pass that her little sister never does.
“April?” I motion toward the door and for her to make sure her voice is lowered so Kendra can’t hear.
Her eyes narrow.
“Considering the nature of the case,” I say, “I’m going to be here.”
“She was not sexually assaulted. Nor is it clear that was her attacker’s intention. If it were, I would have asked you to be here myself.”
“Even if the motivation is unclear but she was dosed, that could mean other residents have already been dosed and assaulted.”
“No one has come to me with such concerns.”
“But…” I gentle my tone. “If they were dosed, they may not be aware that what happened was nonconsensual. Or they may not come to the doctor unless there was… damage.”
“Oh.” She colors a little. “Yes, of course. I had not considered that.”
“May I see your patient, April?”
She nods. Then she pauses, and visibly girds herself before saying, “You were right to come.”
I could tease her about finding that so hard to admit, but it is hard. Being wrong upsets her. It feels like failure.
April leads me into the examination room, where Kendra sits cross-legged on the table.
“Lie down,” April says. “You have been drugged and should not attempt sitting.”
Kendra salutes and stretches out, arms folded over her chest like a corpse. “Can I at least get a pillow?”
I grab two from the next room, and Kendra flips onto her side, hugging one pillow as she props onto her arm.
“I will be in my office,” April says.
When April’s gone, Kendra tells me her story. She’d gone to the Roc with Yolanda. Anders and Gunnar had joined them for a while. Then Kendra had invited Lynn over, and Gunnar slipped off, with Anders following shortly after.
Kendra had two drinks, which was one past her norm, so when she’d felt tipsy after leaving, she blamed the extra booze. The problem with being intoxicated—by booze or drugs—is that your brain isn’t working well enough to assess whether “I just had too much to drink” is a valid explanation for what you’re experiencing.
The memory holes start after Yolanda left shortly before closing. Kendra stayed until the end with Lynn—having invited the other woman to join them, she didn’t want to abandon her. The next thing Kendra remembers is being on the deck of her residence, having apparently gone in and found the toilets occupied.
Unable to wait for a toilet, she’d headed for the woods. Time stutters there, as if she’d been blacking out. Someone attacked her, knocking her down and dragging her into the forest. She managed to scream, which is when Sebastian heard her—he’d been taking his dog, Raoul, for a bedtime walk. Sebastian came running, which scared off Kendra’s attacker.
“I didn’t see who grabbed me,” Kendra says. “I can’t even say for sure it was a man.” She fusses with the pillows. “I know I might have been drugged, but I still can’t believe I didn’t take two seconds to look at who had me.”
“Because you were fighting for your life, not thinking about making an ID. No one is going to wish you’d taken that risk to catch this person. That’s my job.”
Her eyes fill. “Thank you. I’m hoping I did catch a glimpse, and it’ll come to me later.”
I squeeze her hand. “Maybe it will, and if I’m a halfway decent detective, I’ll have already caught whoever attacked you.” I drop my voice. “While people think eyewitness accounts are the best kind of proof, they’re actually one of the least reliable.”
Kendra nods. “When I was doing social work, I had two clients who’d been wrongfully incarcerated because the victim saw an Indigenous person and ID’d them.”
“Here it might seem as if it’d be harder to get it wrong, but add drugs into the mix, and you could end up accidentally ID’ing the last person you saw at the bar. Or even Sebastian.”
Her smile softens. “Who is the one person I know did not attack me. I’m so grateful he was out there. He’s proof that therapy can work, whatever someone’s condition.”
Kendra knows Sebastian’s diagnosis. He insists on that for all staff, partly because he thinks they deserve to know and partly to expand his network of “monitors”; having people watching him helps compensate for what he lacks—the inner voice that tells us things we shouldn’t do.
“Eric’s talking to Sebastian now,” I say, “and getting a look at the site to see whether he can pick up a trail.”
“I’m sure you want to be out there getting a look yourself. My questioning can wait. The crime scene cannot.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“So will I.” She meets my gaze. “I’m shook, but I’m okay.”
When she sees my expression, she sighs. “Yes, there are nightmares in my future, and I probably won’t be drinking for a while… or peeing in the woods. But you know what I mean. Go dive into my crime scene, Casey. Find whoever did this before they try again. That’s my real concern right now. That they’ll try again with another woman… and there won’t be a Sebastian to save her.”