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  “Since you were in close contact, they’ll want your clothes for analysis. I’m presuming you brought a change. And the techies will take scrapes from your fingernails.” Everyone knew that drill.

  “But there’s not blood or anything. I honestly don’t think I scratched or hit him. I just wanted to breathe. I stamped down on his foot.” Her small voice hesitated as she gave more details.

  “From the fact that he let go, you hurt him. Luck played a part, but you bought yourself a bit of time, before Paul came along.” Clearly Maddie had been a fighter.

  “My brother taught me that move. He’s into karate and taekwondo.”

  “You did very well, Maddie. I’m proud of you. In an attack like this, you don’t have much time. Every shot has to count. In one second, things can go either way. You kept your head and didn’t panic.” Holly remembered her RCMP self-defence instructor saying that you had to work against your so-called civilized urges. A palm driven up against the nose could come close to killing. Jabbing someone in the eye was effective, but few could stomach the idea. Politeness didn’t cut it if you were battling for your life. Officers had different rules, unless they wanted to be accused of police brutality.

  The girl gulped and rubbed her nose. Holly was amazed at her composure. As in wartime, people often held together under the worst pressure, only to fall apart when the struggle was over. So far she was making Holly’s job as easy as possible. “And he took my bracelet, too,” she said, looking at her wrist with a wounded frown. “It was real silver. My gran gave it to me when I graduated from high school. It has a little trumpet. I used to play first in the band.”

  Girl trumpet players had to be tough to make it among the boys. And being the lead was impressive. Maybe that fact had helped Maddie fight back. Holly asked, “Do you think that your attacker knew that you were alone? Could he have been observing you during the day?”

  “My tent’s way too small for two. But I’ll tell you something.” She gave a sigh of self-criticism. “Next time I pee nearby. Gross or not.”

  “Don’t blame yourself.” Smiling herself at that familiar image, she laid a hand on Maddie’s shoulder. “Now getting back to your intruder, and we’re supposing a male, is it possible that he wasn’t alone?”

  “I only heard one voice, and he didn’t say much. Just ‘Stop it!’ Like that.” She rubbed at her chin. “Like he was trying to disguise it, making it real deep and growly.”

  Mindful of the time, Holly took a few more notes, closed her pad, and then stood. “They’ll bring a paper bag for your clothes. I’m guessing that by the time they’re here, it will be nearly daylight. They’ll take you back to the scene. I’m going to take a look at it now with Paul. Are you all right with being alone for a few minutes?”

  Maddie’s hand was shaking slightly as she finished the tea and put down the mug. “Sure.” She tucked her feet under her and closed her eyes. In the heat, she had taken off her hoodie.

  Holly noticed her muscular arms. Clearly she was in very good shape. If she’d had the chance to run, she might have avoided the attack. But running blind in the dark was a risk.

  Holly called to the kitchen. “I want to go back to the scene now, Paul. The others should be arriving shortly.” Where were those reinforcements? The girl needed to return to normal life as soon as possible.

  “Bucky will keep you company. You got no worries with him around. Likes his belly scratched,” he continued without emerging. Clinks and clanks sounded. A spoon perhaps.

  Maddie glanced at the oversized hound drooling on his dog bed. “I’ll … be okay.”

  “They’ll take you to the General for precautions. Then to West Shore to sign a statement. That’s the closest branch for Major Crimes.”

  “Major Crimes, but I’m fine. Why do I —”

  Holly levelled eyes at her, softening the effect as much as she could. “That’s just terminology to distinguish it from traffic offences and other minor charges. On the outside chance that this guy is going to try this again, we want to make sure we have all the information to stop him. Besides, it’s one of our most important jobs to be sure that you’re checked out by experts. We are responsible, even though you may feel okay. And it should be considered a sexual assault.”

  Paul finally returned to present Holly with the coffee, hardly warm, but she had appreciated his leaving them alone. She took a few grateful gulps, raising her mug to him. “That was perfect.” She put it onto the table for later. Cold coffee was a way of life for an officer. Had he been listening to their conversation? What had taken him so long?

  “It was lucky you heard her,” Holly said as they made their way back down the path. She still had an unbidden image of him skulking around the campground. He seemed almost too friendly. But he’d been around for years, hadn’t he? Her colleague Ann might know. She’d worked at the detachment before Holly arrived.

  Paul yawned, revealing a few gaps in his front teeth. The breath that emerged was no pansy patch. “Couldn’t sleep myself last night. My old mom’s not well, and she lives in Edmonton. Ninety this year. I’ve taken to calling her nearly every night just to make sure. Then I take a walk to calm down. I like routines. When I was a lad, I was in the navy for a stretch.”

  “Sorry to hear about your mom,” Holly said. Aging parents were a heavy responsibility. Still, she wished her mother had seen her three score and ten. Bonnie Martin would be forever in her late-forties, frozen in her prime.

  “Sound carries in weird ways,” he said. “I go around the inner loop road. Sort of make the rounds. That’s when I heard the struggle.”

  “The timing was a miracle,” Holly said. “You just might have stopped a rape. Or worse.”

  A few minutes later they reached the campsites as a dim light began breaking at the Victoria end of the strait. The east was beyond several hills and blocked by trees. She wanted to talk to him alone to get his impressions.

  “Officer, ma’am,” he said. “I have a funny question.”

  “What is it, Paul?” She had no idea what was coming.

  “Do you think the person who did this is still here now? Thinking on it hard as I can, I didn’t hear any car or truck leave the campground. And we’re miles from anything.” He covered his nose with his palm and then gave an earth-shaking sneeze. “Sorry. Can’t figure it at all.”

  “They are only a few choices. By foot, car, bike, motorcycle. Let’s just say that this is not the usual venue for an assault in the dark.”

  “Venue?” He puzzled. “Oh, cop talk.”

  Securing the scene with one person or even five was a joke. Anyone could beat it through the surrounding woods. What were they supposed to do, put up roadblocks and stop traffic? People in the boonies “knew” the road and drove like the proverbial bat. Erecting something unexpected was asking for an accident, especially with all the curves and hills. She could imagine one of the hundred timber trucks that passed weekly losing its load and crushing cars.

  Maddie had said that she had arrived alone and seen very few people. “But it didn’t bother me,” she had insisted. “Being from the North, this isn’t what I would call wilderness.”

  Holly agreed. She’d been posted as a rookie constable to some remote places and missed the wide open spaces, but it was good to touch base with her father again, if only for a few years. Moving around was a fact of life for the RCMP. Less so recently, though, because it was hard to get officers to make that commitment when they could be on staff in a city police department and put down roots.

  Finally they reached the yurt. The small round enclosure with a ten-foot radius was empty except for two rough wood bunks for sleeping bags. The usage fee bought a roof over the head and a floor. “I found her lying just inside. The door was open,” Paul said.

  “Did you see anyone else? Or hear anything?” Holly asked. The light-coloured yurt would have been more visible.

  Paul gave a negative grunt. “Some footsteps in the brush, crunching leaves or twigs. My beam was
in her eyes, and she looked like a scared animal. Whimpering and rubbing her throat. Bucky barked, the dumb old mutt, but I made him shut up. Had him on a long rope in case he had a mind to go after a bunny. All I could think of was to get her help. My night vision’s not what it used to be. Geez, Louise, if I could have chased him, don’t you think that …”

  “I understand. The point is that you came just in time. We don’t want anyone becoming a hero by endangering their lives. He might have had a weapon.” Holly didn’t want to continue probing. The man felt bad enough as it was. In addition to thick bushes, there were massive trees every twenty feet. Easy enough to duck behind one, then escape in the confusion. Trained though she was, her priority, like Paul’s, would have been to assure that the girl was breathing if not conscious. A question of triage.

  Holly nestled the light between her neck and shoulder and made another note. The headlamp by her bed at home for power outages would have been perfect. Then again, when would she be called out again like this?

  Paul was standing at the yurt door, flashing his beam into every corner. “Maybe there’s something he dropped.” He made as if to step forward.

  Holly took his arm firmly. “No, don’t go in. I’d like everything to stay the same.”

  He gave a light laugh, took off his cap and scratched his elfin ear. “Jesus, there’s probably a gazillion prints on the yurt. Everyone who’s stayed there throughout the whole summer. And last year and the year before that. They don’t exactly have maid service. I pick up some of the big chunks with a whisk broom. That’s all she wrote. Big problem is to leave no food around for these mother-sized Norway rats.”

  Holly gave it an appraisal. The yurt looked cold and unattractive, plastic and impersonal. “Who would want to stay in one of these?”

  The geodesic domes could be rented for twenty dollars a night. People brought their own linen, sleeping bags, and pads. “Old folk. Or younger ones who want more privacy, if you get my drift. Maybe they drove for hours to get here, and then it rains. They don’t want to head right back. To me it’s sort of pretend camping, but I’m old-fashioned.”

  Holly looked at him. “Was anyone staying in the yurts last night?”

  “Not that I saw. I was around earlier on afternoon rounds. Folks on my street feel protective about our park,” Paul said. “Sure, sometimes a few teenagers sneak in. We don’t keep them locked. Young lovers and all that, but it’s a dumb way to save a few bucks. You can get banned from the whole system if you don’t have your reservation slip on the post.”

  Holly wondered if the dawn would ever come. There was no way that in the dark anything was going to come to fruition. They’d been gone a bit long. Maddie might be feeling uncomfortable, even with the dog. A stiff wind was rising off the ocean, though they were sheltered by a greenbelt. Temperate rainforest. Hardly any snow in winter except on the ridges, but cool summers rarely over twenty-five degrees Celsius.

  When she had been in her teens, solitary camping had suited Holly. Head out up one of the logging roads on her bike with her German shepherd and stay for the weekend. Her Coastal Salish mother had approved. Her father had worried himself sick until she returned for Sunday dinner.

  By the time they re-entered the cabin, from the distance came the familiar Doppler sounds of the ambulance. “About friggin’ time,” Holly muttered to herself.

  As Paul let them in, Bucky gave an obligatory woof. Maddie opened her eyes and sat up. Holly said, “Sorry about all these delays. It shouldn’t be long now.”

  Maddie shook her curls. “I’m fine, really. This is silly to get so many people involved when they’re needed someplace else.”

  Holly folded her arms to reinforce the protocol. “They’d have my badge if I didn’t take the precaution. They might want x-rays on your sore throat. You told me that you blacked out for a minute. That could be a sign of a mild concussion.”

  Maddie moved her jaw back and forth and felt a couple of teeth. “Nothing’s loose. And I’d know if I’d hit my head.”

  Holly used Paul’s phone to call the Sooke detachment to give them the update. Bucky had ambled over to Maddie on the sofa and was nosing her leg, his big bleary eyes sympathetic. The girl stroked his broad head. He almost grinned, demonstrating the loss of one canine tooth. Holly doubted if Paul had the income for dental care for himself or the dog. “He’s a good old boy,” the girl said, with a bit more cheer. “I miss my pup Finny in Timmins.”

  “You are a long way from home,” Holly remarked. “I know what that can be like, having been in The Pas on my first assignment. Similar weather to Northern Ontario. I bet you snowmobiled.”

  “I had my own little red Bravo,” Maddie said. “It rode like the wind.”

  Holly went out with Paul to direct the ambulance, pulling up in front of the green reflective metal house address. Every rural property had to have a standardized sign with glowing letters. Many people had such artistic, custom-carved signs that they were hard for fire and emergency personnel to see.

  “I’ve taken a statement, and arranged for her clothes to be collected,” she said to the two men who pulled up and got out with their kit. A minute of description of the assault clued them in. “I’ve told her that she’ll have to get checked here and at the hospital, too. Right now she’s coherent and calm, considering what she’s been through. Her throat’s pretty sore, though.” Taking their stretcher, they made their way to the cabin.

  An unmarked car pulled up behind the ambulance and one of the West Shore inspectors got out. Holly had met Russell Crew at a mandatory seminar on stun guns. She filled him in on what she had done and learned. He wore a leather bomber jacket over slacks and a sweater. Holly imagined that he wasn’t thrilled to be pulled out of bed this early.

  Crew lit up a cigarette and blew three concentric rings, admiring them. “We’re no strangers to sexual assaults in town. But here? Go figure. Guy must be a real nut.”

  She nodded. “Likes the fresh air. Let’s hope it’s the one and only. Crime should stay in the city where it belongs.”

  “Hey, why should life in La La Land be any different for you lucky dogs?” He stubbed out the cigarette, flipped it into the wet ditch, and headed for the cabin. “Stick around. We may need you. I’ve only got one man. It didn’t seem like much of a priority until I got the details from Sooke. I’ll introduce myself, have a look-see, and catch up with our vic at the hospital after they check her over here.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dawn was arriving on cue, though it seemed like an eternity. Holly sat in the park’s picnic area, which overlooked the ocean. Scarcely two years ago, after the typhoon, hundreds of volunteers had helped the park system heal. Stumps and sawdust were the only traces, along with new picnic tables to replace those crushed by a monster Sitka spruce.

  In the distance she saw a familiar butt of driftwood. “Ganesh,” shaped more like an elephant seal than an elephant. Her Sikh constable Chipper (Chirakumar) Knox Singh had shown her pictures of the colourful Indian gods and goddesses. Pantheist though she was, it seemed a much more romantic and imaginative religion than gory crucifixions and thorny crowns. “Law enforcement could use Kali’s six arms,” he had joked, along with the fearful goddess’s “take no prisoners” attitude.

  A normal morning at the Fossil Bay detachment meant monitoring traffic along the fifty kilometres to the tiny fishing village and timber depository of Port Renfrew. Beyond that, petty theft from hikers’ cars led the list, followed by an occasional domestic assault and house breaking. Of the several hundred residences in the areas, some were only summer cottages. Drunk driving came next, along with the occasional pot farm bust back in the hills. Recently meth labs had joined the party. With few places to gather, teenagers without cars rarely got up to mischief.

  Holly had taken her first command post in Fossil Bay only a few months ago. Seven years had passed since her training at the Depot in Winnipeg. Then came The Pas in Manitoba and a short time as a replacement in Port McNeil at the no
rth end of Vancouver Island. E Division in British Columbia made up one-third of the nation’s RCMP total, over 9,500 employees. In the Island District, which included a mainland chunk north of the Sunshine Coast, were about twenty detachments, the number in flux because of an effort to eliminate the old-style one-person posts.

  Equal opportunity had come a long way since the first woman graduated over thirty years ago, receiving a pillbox hat, a skirt, and a purse. But with the bad international publicity following the stun-gun death of a man at the Vancouver Airport and more than a few brutality reports during arrests and custody, the escutcheon of the fabled red-serge force was tarnishing. Many citizens were calling for a return to the British Columbia Provincial Police, phased out in the fifties. Large provinces like Ontario and Quebec had their own forces.

  Law enforcement had not been Holly’s first choice. Even when she was ten, the beaches and forests of the island were her schools and cathedrals. She had enrolled at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, following her dream of a degree in biology. Her goal was to be a ranger in the wilderness, protecting the land she loved.

  Then, before she graduated, her mother Bonnie had disappeared. Full-blooded Coastal Salish, from the Cowichan band north of Victoria, Bonnie had met Norman Martin at the University of Toronto when they were young and idealistic. She had passed the bar exam at Osgoode Hall and begun her career in a small law firm in Victoria. Before long she found a true calling in helping abused First Nations women, especially in isolated communities, find resources to heal and get jobs. Heading out of Campbell River for Gold River and remote Tahsis on the west coast near Nootka Island one fall, she had disappeared. No trace of her elderly Bronco had been found. As frustrated as she was heartbroken, Holly transferred into the school of justice, completed her degree, and joined the RCMP.

  Giving her a welcome roo, Shogun leaped from the car and was clipped onto a long, retractable leash. Sometimes an unofficial dog helped ease the tensions.