Part 4
Reed met him above the station with a second light and a warning that the other patrol was still behind a plow on the coast road. They were on this side of the closed pass, but the drifts had slowed them. He had told dispatch where he and Jack were going. Jack nodded, grateful that the man had done the talking before he had to ask.
Ash waited near the broken railing. This time she passed the opening beneath the deck and went around the rusted instrument shed, keeping her nose close to a strip of sheltered ground. Jack followed the darker line of her back through the snow.
Behind the building, old wall panels formed a narrow passage against the rock. The wind barely reached it. He smelled fish, stale bedding, and fuel before his light found the first cage.
Reed put a hand against Jack’s arm. They listened, checked the passage, and called out. No one answered. Through the open doorway they could see two more crude enclosures, boards reinforced with wire, a bucket of frozen scraps, and a chain fastened low to the wall.
Ash went directly to one cage. She pushed at its corner with her nose, then scraped beneath a loose board until her injured shoulder made her stop. Jack crouched where she had been digging. Reed photographed the board before Jack eased it aside.
A leather collar lay under it. The inside was stiff and dark, with long gray hairs caught beneath the buckle. Ash pressed her muzzle against it and made a low sound that Jack felt in his teeth.
He had followed her expecting another pup. Now he looked at the empty cage and the different shade of hair, wondering whether someone from her pack had been held here too. He could not know who the animal was, or whether it had died or been taken away. Ash stayed over the collar while Reed photographed it, and Jack waited beside her without touching her back.
“Leave it where it is,” Reed said. “I have the location.”
Their lights moved across empty glass ampoules, lengths of rope, and another unused snare. North Shore was stenciled on a crate beneath the shelf. Reed photographed the labels without guessing aloud what any of the containers had held.
Jack saw the notebook when he turned toward the door. It was wrapped in an oily rag on a high shelf, protected from the damp that had swollen the boards. He pointed it out; Reed photographed it in place, then watched as Jack lifted it clear.
There were dates, amounts, and names. Some lines looked like ordinary bookings until he reached the columns beside them: night photography, predator on chain, live bait. One instruction about keeping animals out of sight during inspections had been underlined twice.
Jack held the book open while Reed took pictures. Then he closed the cover carefully and waited for Reed to finish the record of where it had been found.
“She’s no accident at a fish shed,” he said.
“No.” Reed looked toward the passage. “We need to get this secured, and we need to get her out of here.”
Ash had begun moving between the cage and the doorway. She would stop near the collar, return to the passage, and listen. Jack noticed the movement before he heard anything outside.
Back in town, Mae returned to the chapel after Evelyn told her the pups were settled for the moment. Father Paul had the cassette player on the bench, its loose cover held aside by a hymnbook. He had replaced the batteries and coaxed the old mechanism into turning.
“It may not run twice,” he said. “We’ll listen once through.”
Nathan’s voice emerged beneath the hiss. Mae put her hand over her mouth before the first sentence was finished. It was his work voice, the impatient tone he used when a fault ought to have been simple and refused to be.
He reported the main radio failing. He named the cooperative’s boat and said they had asked that its departure be kept quiet until morning. Then he said Jack had gone out to the reserve antenna and was trying to bring the shore link back.
There was a long stretch of interference. Mae leaned closer, as though distance from the speaker might explain the missing words. Then Jack’s younger voice came through, thin and strained: he was going up to the antenna, he wanted them to keep calling.
Father Paul left the machine running through the remaining noise. When the tape stopped, he pressed the button gently and waited. Mae could still hear the breath Nathan had taken before speaking.
“I told people he never answered,” she said.
“You didn’t have this.”
She looked at the open box. “I did.”
Father Paul did not correct her. He put the cassette into its case and helped her wrap it with the notebook. She took both back toward the cottage, carrying them inside her coat to keep them dry.
At the station, a snowmachine engine rose beyond the shed. Jack was already near the mouth of the passage when the headlights swung across it, bleaching the snow so completely that he could no longer see the road. Ash flattened herself beside the wall.
Grant Pike stopped the machine across the entrance. A second man climbed off behind him with a flare gun held low against his leg. The man’s face was hidden by his hood and the angle of the light.
“That’s cooperative property,” Pike said, looking at the notebook.
Reed brought his phone up against his chest. Jack saw him start the recording before he answered.
“We’re at the old government station. We’ve found animals have been held here.”
“You’ve found somebody’s equipment. Half the coast stores things here.” Pike took off one glove and tucked it beneath his belt. “You want to make allegations, do it in an office.”
“We’re leaving with what we’ve documented.”
The man behind Pike shifted the flare gun. Jack could not tell whether he meant to raise it or merely make sure they saw it. Ash’s lips pulled back, exposing teeth in the hard wash of the headlights.
Jack had spent enough time in narrow places to know what he could reach first. The old calculation arrived with a sickening ease, and he pressed his empty hand against the seam of his coat. He kept the notebook close to his body.
“Your man needs to lower that,” Reed said.
Pike ignored him. He stepped closer to Jack, blocking the gap between the snowmachine and the wall, then held out his bare hand.
“Give me the book.”
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