-Alfred Tennyson

      Prologue

      The sea spread satiny glass across the sheltered bay. Amid lazy undulations, a blue heron rode his kelp-bed carpet and peered for minnows. White meringue clouds watched their reflections, overweighted galleons on a cerulean mirror floating towards the Olympic Mountains of Washington State. Up poked the mustachioed face of an acrobatic seal, which flipped in a lazy pose to warm its belly in the September sun. Deep below, a red rock crab found something to its liking. Soft tissue gave way as it inched along propelled by large nippers, using smaller chelipads close to the head to urge meaty delicacies into its eager maw. Then a fickle current swept the meal away, and the hapless crab dropped over a shelf to the deeper sea floor, where it was seized by an opportune Dungeness cousin.

      Trailing a frothy cloud of bubbles, a snorkeler angled down for a peek at a host of purple sea urchins. Carrying an underwater camera, he feathered his fins through the heavy tendrils of bull kelp, bulbous at one end, fat whips which bobbed on the tides until tossed ashore. The man paused to admire a cluster of whelks and a nervous school of sculpins, then took a few grab shots of a sea cucumber. A forest of leathery brown rockweed, clinging to the slippy basalt with its disc-like holdfasts, drifted into his path, then the dark crimson blades of Turkish towel seaweed. Carefully he pushed it aside, startling a juvenile octopus, which had scuttled from a mollusk- mounded crevice. He checked his watch. Ten o’clock already. He should be getting back to the car. Monica was meeting him for brunch at Point No Point. With his appetite fueled by the cold water and exertion, he could almost taste their luscious cheese scones.

      Then something large glided into his peripheral vision, and he turned, moving his legs to stabilize himself. Whales were common around the island, but they didn’t usually come so close to shore...unless they were sick or injured. A mane of yellow hair and a chalk-pale face with vacant light-blue eyes searched his like a diffident lover. Hands clutched at him. He coughed out his mouthpiece and surged to the surface with a silent scream, choking as he yanked off his mask and thrashed his fins as if a killer shark rode his tail. When he scrabbled over the rocky shelf, his prize Canon fell onto the coral, cracking the lens.

      One

      You can’t go home again. As a tautology, it was both as true and false as the nostalgic snows of yesteryear. Here in body, here in spirit, but many grains of sand had fallen through the hourglass.

      Corporal Holly Martin opened the creaky door of the white clapboard house and saw a head turn at the reception desk and nod in pointed silence. No warm welcome on her first day in charge. Once the ice was broken with Ann Troy, she had confidence that the business of policing the small community would proceed. So far she felt like an interloper. They’d only been introduced a week ago, but how could you offend with a “hello”? Easy enough if that person had expected to have your job.

      The RCMP Fossil Bay Detachment, an hour west of Victoria, British Columbia, had seen its leader, Reg Wilkinson, take early retirement. A product of sausage-and-egg breakfasts, the tall, barrel-chested man had earned a triple bypass at fifty-two and was resigned to oatmeal, cholesterol medication, and half-an-hour a day on the treadmill at his cottage in Chemainus. In a cautionary tone during their interview in his office a month ago, he’d told Holly to expect a cool reception from Ann. “She’s a good officer. She’ll come around.” Had they been closer than colleagues? Reg was personable, a courtly charmer. Ann, a decade younger, was a single mother. At Holly’s raised eyebrow, Reg sat large and silent as the Sphinx. “None of my beeswax. You’ll find all you need to know in the staff bios.”

      “Morning, Ann,” Holly said, making a point of using the woman’s name. She poured a fresh cup from the coffee maker. Half empty already. How early had the woman come in? It was only seven twenty. Holly had imagined herself opening up on her first day, asserting command if only in a minor way. “Next pot’s on me. Do you like it strong?” Nothing but a shrug in response. “I brought banana bread. My dad baked it.”

      She placed the plate on the table and folded back the foil in unspoken invitation. Contrary to the romantic Rose Marie notions of red coats, a full-dress mode for special occasions, Holly wore a grey shirt, long-sleeved now in fall, with a dark blue tie, dark blue pants with gold strapping along with ankle boots spit-shined this morning, and a policeman’s style cap. Leaving on her protective vest, she hung her Gore-Tex jacket in the narrow closet, tucking her hat onto the shelf and relishing the new freedom of the mild climate. In The Pas, her first post, she had worn a parka eight months of the year. Southern Vancouver Island was Canada’s Caribbean. Little if any snow, but deluges of hail, sleet and rain all winter. Three sturdy umbrellas nestled in the corner.

      Corporal Ann Troy wore her uniform with pride, but at 5' 4", she carried one hundred and thirty-five pounds on two fewer inches than Holly. A latecomer to the force after raising her son into his teens, Ann had been posted to Fossil Bay, on track to take over. But her intervention at an armed robbery at a convenience store had saved a young clerk’s life and changed hers forever. A crazed Victoria man had gone on a one-man crime wave, stealing car after car and crashing them as he sped west on the narrow coastal road. Ann had happened on the scene as he exited the store, waving a shotgun, people screaming behind him. A volleyball player in her youth, she had courted unaware the gradual onset of degenerative disk disease. The skeletal shock of tackling the large man had been the trigger that wore away the final lumbar cushion.

      The exams she’d passed with honours the week before the accident gave her the nominal rank of corporal, but after an unsuccessful rehabilitation failed to improve her chronic condition, under the “duty to accommodate” regulations, she was given a desk job consisting of paperwork, phone answering and supervision of the small volunteer staff. Disability offers had been snapped back in the face of the administration. She didn’t intend to sit at home and measure her life with coffee spoons. Ann lived for the law, her son Nick and her cat Bump. A framed picture of the apricot devil with its rhinestone collar sat on her desk in reception. Nick’s college graduation picture had equal pride of place. He was model material, but his mouth had a kind and innocent smile. Perhaps in her happier pain-free days, Ann had once shared that attractive quality. Minutes ticked by on the wall clock as Holly sipped coffee.

      “Seems quiet,” Holly said in an implied question, then realized how foolish she sounded. The overture had been made. Why grovel so much that she was annoying even herself? She moved to the front window, looking out on an empty gravel lot. “Where’s Chipper?”

      “He took the car for servicing at Tri-City,” Ann said