SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
“You’re looking good, Ranger,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer Pierre Beauchamp greeted Caitlin, upstairs in Captain Tepper’s office where he’d been waiting for her.
“I wasn’t the one who got shot on the last case we worked together, Mountie,” Caitlin returned, taking his outstretched hand.
Beauchamp shrugged humbly. “All worked out for the better. Thanks to us taking down those Hells Angels, I ended up reassigned to a Joint Terrorism Task Force dealing primarily with border issues.”
“Big shot now, eh?” Caitlin asked him, doing her best to mimic a Canadian accent.
“You’ve been doing pretty well for yourself, too, from what I hear.”
“If you count being a pain in just about everybody’s ass, I suppose.”
“You take down the Hells Angels, you can take down just about anyone.”
“They’re nothing compared to what we’re facing now.”
“ISIS, from what I’ve heard.”
“You’ve heard right. And my guess is your coming all the way down here is connected to them. Something my captain said you’re only willing to share with me, I’m figuring’s, got nothing at all to do with border issues. That because of our history, Mountie?”
“More on account of the fact that I know you’ll believe what I’ve got to say, Ranger.”
Beauchamp laid it all out as quickly and succinctly as he could; he was a no-nonsense man, good at making his points. Except for a touch of gray at the temples, he looked exactly as Caitlin remembered him: straitlaced and by the book, from his demeanor to his dress to the way he held himself. His pants were perfectly pressed and his shirt showed nary a wrinkle, to the point that Caitlin figured he must have changed after getting off the plane. He had a boy’s plump, rosy cheeks but a gunman’s steely-eyed stare that could look both ways and straight ahead at the same time.
Beauchamp closed Captain Tepper’s office door before launching into the tale of a Canadian fur trapper named Joe Labelle who, in 1930, happened upon an Inuit village in Nunavut, Canada, where the entire lot of residents had vanished at virtually the same time. Meals had been left uneaten, fires were untended, and big jugs of water, filled at a tributary off the nearby Lake Anjikuni, had been abandoned on the ground and left to freeze.
“For a long time,” Beauchamp told her, “it was Canada’s version of your lost Roanoke Colony.”
“Difference is, that mystery’s really never been solved,” Caitlin reminded, “while I’m guessing yours was.”
“Not to the knowledge of many, Ranger. I knew I had to get my ass on a plane as soon as I read the situation report on what happened at that Austin restaurant. Eighteen dead, was it?”
“Twenty-two, including the staff.”
“That Inuit village numbered twice that.”
“But they disappeared.”
“Turned out, they didn’t disappear at all. Turned out, Labelle found what was left of them, after somebody had burned all the bodies.” He paused, then continued, “Near as I’ve been able to tell, the residents of the village were all struck down within minutes of each other.”
“Sounds like quite a leap, Mountie.”
“Not when you consider the trapper’s story, along with the on-scene reports from my predecessors. Just about the entire village was eating, or about to eat, supper at the time. And the fact that the food still on their plates told the first Mounties on the scene that whatever happened, happened fast. Just like in your restaurant.”
“And what did those Mounties say about what killed your villagers?”
“Nothing, because they didn’t have a clue, especially given that whatever evidence there might’ve been had gone up in smoke.”
“What about whoever did the burning? Did this trapper Labelle mention anything about them?”
“He didn’t. But the Mounties who responded to Labelle’s report recovered two still-whole bodies not far from where the rest of the bodies had been burned. One had his throat cut, and the other his wrists. They died sitting back to back. I believe it may have been determined they were brothers.”
“One cut the throat of the other, then slit his own wrists,” Caitlin concluded. “Makes sense. What doesn’t is why they did it, and why they burned the bodies in the first place.”
“The tribe was relatively primitive, having lived the same way for centuries. They were also superstitious, beholden to the spirit world for guidance. The brothers might have returned to the village and saw the mass deaths as the work of evil spirits who intended on taking over the bodies of the dead.”
“Their only solution being to burn them.” Caitlin nodded.
“Exactly. Knowing the whole time they’d have to die too, to stop the spirits in their tracks.”