wanted her found,” McCoy stated with sudden insight.
They all nodded.
Griff didn’t like that potential twist to this case. Killers rarely wanted the body found unless they were trying to make a statement. And killers making a statement rarely stopped with one victim. A shout at the front door caught his attention.
McCoy checked her shoulder and then turned back. “Dwight Wineberg. Foreman at Harrison-Wolff Mining Company. He’s the guy in charge of Frenchmans Bight. Nothing happens around here that Dwight doesn’t know about.”
Griff nodded. “Bring him in, Constable. Get him to sign approval forms for the searches and then I’ll interview him.”
***
“This sucks.” Vikki had been in a pissy mood all morning, but now Cam was right there with her. It didn’t help that she’d given herself a headache by clamping down on asking questions about where Vikki had spent last night.
It was none of her business.
Cam stepped into the shallow water, slipping over boulders and skull-sized rocks toward the fish-trap in the center of the river.
Arctic char swam out of the river and into the sea when the ice melted in May. The fish fed in the sea and then swam back upriver to spawn in July and August the same year. Theoretically, Cam was supposed to be catching the ones heading back upriver to spawn. Unfortunately, theoretical was all she’d caught.
“George,” Cam shouted to George Mitchell, the mine company’s biologist, “the reason we don’t have any fish in the trap is there are holes in the counting fence.” She pointed to a broken strut that created a three-inch gap.
“That’s impossible…” George sloshed into the river to peer into the crystal-clear depths.
“Tell that to the fish,” Cam said as another teleost wiggled through the metal bars.
George was in his fifties, a tall gangly man who didn’t seem to know what to do with his arms. As a consultant with thirty years’ experience, he’d been responsible for the construction of the counting fence, but from the broken blood vessels on his nose, Cam suspected he spent more time researching the bottom of a whisky bottle.
She swatted a mosquito that tried to bite through her bug jacket. The air was thick with insects in this swampy expanse near the mouth of the river. The only things worse than the mosquitoes were the black flies that burrowed along fabric seams, hunting for exposed skin. She’d left the hood of her bug jacket unzipped. The mesh obscured her vision, and after finding Sylvie Watson yesterday she was too spooked to lose her peripheral vision. Plus, there were bears in this part of the wilderness, lots of bears, taking advantage of the short, sharp northern summer. Cam didn’t want to be surprised by five hundred pounds of Ursus americanus looking for a calorific boost.
Even smothered in DEET, she was conscious of the awful crawly sensation of insects biting her flesh.
The humidity not only popped sweat on her skin, it also turned her hair into steel wool. Tempers were as ragged as the fence. So far Cam hadn’t put her hands on a single fish, and her dreams of getting the project off to a speedy start were disappearing as fast as the char. She tried to wrestle another broken spike out of the fence, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Let me do it.” George grabbed it and wrenched the strut free. “There are more in a pile just over that hill.” He flapped his hand in the general direction of the swamp, but Cam was sick of people watching her do all the work.
“Great.” She tugged her ball cap low over her eyes and stood her ground in the thigh-deep water.
“Tommy!” With an impatient look, George shouted to one of the two assistants the mine company had provided, both summer students from Memorial University in St. John’s. “Go get us some of these, please.” He brandished the broken metal rod in the air but Tommy, an eighteen-year-old who wore the habitual expression of a vegetarian forced to eat liver, didn’t
They all nodded.
Griff didn’t like that potential twist to this case. Killers rarely wanted the body found unless they were trying to make a statement. And killers making a statement rarely stopped with one victim. A shout at the front door caught his attention.
McCoy checked her shoulder and then turned back. “Dwight Wineberg. Foreman at Harrison-Wolff Mining Company. He’s the guy in charge of Frenchmans Bight. Nothing happens around here that Dwight doesn’t know about.”
Griff nodded. “Bring him in, Constable. Get him to sign approval forms for the searches and then I’ll interview him.”
***
“This sucks.” Vikki had been in a pissy mood all morning, but now Cam was right there with her. It didn’t help that she’d given herself a headache by clamping down on asking questions about where Vikki had spent last night.
It was none of her business.
Cam stepped into the shallow water, slipping over boulders and skull-sized rocks toward the fish-trap in the center of the river.
Arctic char swam out of the river and into the sea when the ice melted in May. The fish fed in the sea and then swam back upriver to spawn in July and August the same year. Theoretically, Cam was supposed to be catching the ones heading back upriver to spawn. Unfortunately, theoretical was all she’d caught.
“George,” Cam shouted to George Mitchell, the mine company’s biologist, “the reason we don’t have any fish in the trap is there are holes in the counting fence.” She pointed to a broken strut that created a three-inch gap.
“That’s impossible…” George sloshed into the river to peer into the crystal-clear depths.
“Tell that to the fish,” Cam said as another teleost wiggled through the metal bars.
George was in his fifties, a tall gangly man who didn’t seem to know what to do with his arms. As a consultant with thirty years’ experience, he’d been responsible for the construction of the counting fence, but from the broken blood vessels on his nose, Cam suspected he spent more time researching the bottom of a whisky bottle.
She swatted a mosquito that tried to bite through her bug jacket. The air was thick with insects in this swampy expanse near the mouth of the river. The only things worse than the mosquitoes were the black flies that burrowed along fabric seams, hunting for exposed skin. She’d left the hood of her bug jacket unzipped. The mesh obscured her vision, and after finding Sylvie Watson yesterday she was too spooked to lose her peripheral vision. Plus, there were bears in this part of the wilderness, lots of bears, taking advantage of the short, sharp northern summer. Cam didn’t want to be surprised by five hundred pounds of Ursus americanus looking for a calorific boost.
Even smothered in DEET, she was conscious of the awful crawly sensation of insects biting her flesh.
The humidity not only popped sweat on her skin, it also turned her hair into steel wool. Tempers were as ragged as the fence. So far Cam hadn’t put her hands on a single fish, and her dreams of getting the project off to a speedy start were disappearing as fast as the char. She tried to wrestle another broken spike out of the fence, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Let me do it.” George grabbed it and wrenched the strut free. “There are more in a pile just over that hill.” He flapped his hand in the general direction of the swamp, but Cam was sick of people watching her do all the work.
“Great.” She tugged her ball cap low over her eyes and stood her ground in the thigh-deep water.
“Tommy!” With an impatient look, George shouted to one of the two assistants the mine company had provided, both summer students from Memorial University in St. John’s. “Go get us some of these, please.” He brandished the broken metal rod in the air but Tommy, an eighteen-year-old who wore the habitual expression of a vegetarian forced to eat liver, didn’t
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