MURDEROUS MORNING: A heart-stopping crime novel with a stunning end. Read online

  Murderous Morning

  Bernadette Calonego

  Translated by

  Peter and Rosa Stenberg

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also By Bernadette Calonego

  About the Translators

  Copyright © 2020 by Bernadette Calonego, Calonego Media, Inc.

  Translation Copyright © 2020 by Peter and Rosa Stenberg

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing by the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. For information regarding permission, contact the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  Previously published as Mörderischer Morgen, by Calonego Media Inc. in Canada in 2019. Translated from German by Peter and Rosa Stenberg.

  Published by Calonego Media, Inc., Gibsons, B.C., Canada

  bernadettecalonego.com

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-9992302-4-1

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-9992302-5-8

  Cover design by Vila Design: viladesign.net (Photos Depositphotos, fransz, Imaginechina-Tuchong)

  Interior design by Heike Fröhling: writerontour.de

  Editing by Lindsey Alexander of Reading List Editorial: readinglisteditorial.com

  Editing of the German original: Gisa Marehn

  For Stephanie and David

  Prologue

  The bear smells its prey from a long way off. She stands on her hind legs and takes in its scent.

  It is not far away.

  She runs toward it.

  She has had nothing to eat in the last few days, nothing that would really fill her stomach, only roots, grass, mushrooms, leaves, a mouse.

  The chickens near the house have disappeared. The bear has been killing and devouring them for weeks. That is child’s play for a grizzly. A couple of swats from her giant paws and the fences came down. She emptied out the chicken coop.

  The bear is hunting in the woods. She knows that when it comes to this prey she must not make much noise, must not break through the bushes or step on rotten wood.

  The smell is nearby. Only a few meters away. All of her senses are on high alert.

  The doe is standing there quietly. It looks around. Its ears are pricked up; it cannot see the danger ahead.

  The bear gets ready to attack.

  The doe flees, but the bear is quicker, and with a few leaps she has reached her prey. A deep bite in the neck and the battle is over.

  She dives into her dinner. Her great sharp teeth rip through the hide, into the warm meat. She licks the blood from her muzzle and chews. Then suddenly she raises her large head.

  Voices. Much too close.

  The voices come from the house, the house with the chickens.

  She has to find out whether the voices are a threat to her dinner.

  She must defend her prey. Nothing can get in the way. Furiously she pushes her head through the bushes toward where the voices come from. High-pitched voices and deep voices. She smells man.

  The people see her and get louder and more agitated; some run away. One person stays there for a time and then gradually moves away, never taking his eyes off the bear.

  Then there is a shot. The bear is frightened and pulls back. She knows the sound of a shot. It is better for her to run away from there. She must take her prey to a safe place.

  She drags the doe deeper into the woods. Then she waits and listens. No more voices, no more shots. She fills her stomach and buries the rest of the cadaver.

  When she lies down she once again hears a shot, but it is much farther away. She is still on alert, but after that it gets quiet.

  It is now warmer in the woods. It’s better to wait until it is dark.

  In the night she goes out hunting again.

  She smells something very strange. She runs in the direction of the house.

  At night she is safe there. She smells blood, and something is lying in the grass. Out in the clearing.

  She gets close, sniffs out the dead body from top to bottom.

  It’s something she’s never eaten before.

  She gives herself plenty of time to sniff the dead person. Nobody disturbs her. No sounds from the house. Just this smell from the blood.

  Then she continues her rounds. Leaves the dead body lying.

  She’s full.

  For the time being.

  1

  Vancouver — June 2, 2017

  The appointment with her client was nearly over. Tessa Griffins was glad about that because the worried-looking face of her assistant had already appeared twice behind the thick glass wall that separated the conference room from the other offices. As the client gathered her documents together, Tessa slipped her feet into the black-and-white pumps she had bought two days before.

  She felt a lot more comfortable in her running shoes, but she should have thought of that before she took a job as a lawyer with Boyd Shenkar. She had met Boyd two years earlier when she turned thirty-three and was made partner at the law firm, now called Shenkar & Griffins. Boyd was the best colleague she could imagine, but he had no tolerance for dressing down, not even on Casual Friday. Many firms in Vancouver allowed their employees to wear jeans and T-shirts on Fridays. Tessa loved the idea, but it would have shocked conservative Boyd, who was ten years older than Tessa.

  In the meantime, it had become second nature to her to dress in fashionable and expensive clothes. Tessa had gained a reputation as an energetic and hard-nosed family rights lawyer in Vancouver. She did not want to be seen as the girl from the outback, which she once had been. She came from the small, isolated mining town of Whatou Lake in northern British Columbia. The town was still only reachable by plane, unless you were willing to slug your way for days across mountains, through swamps and virgin forests, and across rushing rivers. Or risk a dangerous boat trip along the wild Pacific coastline. There were a few di
rt roads in and around Whatou Lake, which forestry and mining companies had put in, but instead of leading to civilization, they ran ever deeper into the wilderness.

  There will always be people crazy enough to want to find their precarious freedom out in Nowheresville. When Tessa’s father, as a young doctor, began to get job offers from the big hospitals in Vancouver and Toronto, his relatives and friends thought he was out of his mind when he accepted a position in Whatou Lake instead. Kenneth Griffins hated the hierarchy and bureaucracy of large institutions. He loved untamed nature. At heart, Tessa liked to believe, her father thought of himself as a pioneer. For the people of Whatou Lake, he was a minor king, and the wilderness all around him was his kingdom. Much as it was for the grizzlies who crisscrossed the land.

  Tessa felt an unpleasant fluttering in her stomach. That always happened when she thought about bears.

  She accompanied the client to the door and hurried back. The assistant’s round Asian face looked very worried. “You must call your father right away.”

  Tessa’s throat tightened. “Has something happened to my mother?”

  Martha Griffins had recently discovered a new lump in her breast that fortunately proved to be benign, but the experience brought up the possibility that her parents might soon die, although both of them were only in their early sixties. She hadn’t visited for two years already, because she really didn’t want to face the daunting prospect of a trip back to Whatou Lake. Her parents had flown down to Vancouver a couple of times. “That’s a nice little vacation,” her mother had said. “It’s no problem for us to fly down there.” Tessa believed her. Surely there were occasions when her mother also liked to get away from Whatou Lake.

  “No,” the assistant said, looking at a note with only one name on it. “It’s about Fran.”

  “My half sister,” Tessa said. That wasn’t quite true. Fran wasn’t her half sister, but one of the many foster children Martha Griffins had taken into her house. Fran quickly won a place in Tessa’s heart. Maybe because they were so different. Tessa was very ambitious and spunky, and Fran was shy and quiet. At least in the beginning. Under the wing of her foster mother, she blossomed and gradually got over the first traumatic years of her life, as much as a girl can.

  Just like Tessa, the adult Fran had put some distance between herself and Whatou Lake. But she hadn’t sought protection in a big city twelve hundred kilometers away.

  She’d settled in a large clearing in the wilderness. She’d married a man named Hank Miller, a lumberjack, and built a log cabin with him, with power from a generator and water from a well. She raised three children with him.

  What had happened? The last time Tessa had talked to her on the satellite telephone, she thought that Fran seemed stressed out and a bit lethargic and withdrawn. That was about three weeks ago. In the background she had heard children’s voices: Breena, Clyde, and Kayley. The oldest child was eight, the middle one was six, and the youngest was four. Fran homeschooled them. Tessa thought that all sounded very intense. But Fran had chosen this life and didn’t want anything else. Tessa couldn’t help noticing that Fran was very much tied to the house while Hank was often away. Initially he worked as a logger, then he found work at Watershed Lodge, a rustic tourist destination on an remote bay surrounded by virgin forest.

  Tessa helped him get the job. As a bear guide, Hank took tourists grizzly watching. The lodge belonged to the Sitklat’l First Nation, with whom Tessa had a very good relationship, since she had helped them to defend their land claims in the courts against the British Columbia provincial government. The Sitklat’l had claimed the land they had used before the white settlers took it from them. Tessa and her team had compelled the government to right this wrong. That was before she had broken up with Tsaytis Chelin, the son of the Sitklat’l band chief.

  She avoided thinking about Tsaytis, since his name brought back too many painful memories. All of her thoughts were now focused on Fran. She told her assistant that she would deal with this immediately and went into her office.

  Kenneth Griffins picked up the phone on the third ring.

  “Tessa.” That was all he could say.

  “Dad, what’s wrong? What’s happened to Fran?”

  “You’ve got to come right away. We need you.”

  The voice didn’t sound like her dad’s. It was the voice of a stranger. Tessa felt an ice-cold breath blow into the room.

  “Dad, tell me what’s going on. What’s happened?” She heard a deep sigh on the other end of the line.

  “Hank is dead and so are all the kids. Fran . . . we don’t know where she is. They still haven’t . . . found her.”

  Tessa froze. The bank building, where pigeons and gulls rested on the protruding ledges, began to blur in front of her eyes.

  “What are you saying? Dead? What happened? I don’t understand.”

  “You just have to come here immediately,” her father repeated. His voice was shaky. He held back a groan. Never before had she known him to sound so distraught. Kenneth Griffins was always in control; he always knew what had to be done. Dr. Griffins was a father figure not only for her family but also for the people of Whatou Lake and the Sitklat’l reserve. He was always ready to help anybody. Now he seemed to be completely helpless.

  She let the lawyer in her speak, a reflex she had relied on a thousand times. She blocked everything out and reached for her pen. Maybe it was all just a misunderstanding, an awful dream.

  “Dad, I’ll get there as fast as I can. But first I need some information. Who is dead?” Her matter-of-fact tone seemed to help Dr. Griffins to regain control.

  “Hank and the kids—all four of them are dead.”

  Oh, my God. Tessa gripped the pen so tightly her fingers hurt. “What did they die of?”

  Her father didn’t seem to hear her. “Fran, where is Fran? We’ve got to get a search party out.” He sounded desperate.

  “Dad, where did they find Hank and the kids?”

  “Hank in front of the house and the children inside. Tsaytis Chelin called the police.”

  Tessa’s heart skipped a beat.

  “What was Tsaytis doing out there?”

  Hank and Fran’s farm was so far from everything that nobody just showed up there by chance. Especially not Tsaytis Chelin.

  “I don’t know. I could only talk to him very briefly. Everything . . . just happened.”

  Tsaytis found the bodies. How strange. “What else did Tsaytis tell you?”

  “He saw a lot of blood.” Her father’s voice broke off.

  Tessa held her breath.

  Don’t let it be true. Please, don’t let it be true.

  Her father’s voice staggered on. “I talked briefly with the people at Watershed Lodge. Hank didn’t show up for work the last two days. You know Hank and Fran. They would have let the lodge know if Hank was sick.”

  There was only a satellite phone in Fran’s house. All the scattered settlers in the area could listen in, but it was indispensable for emergencies.

  “When was Tsaytis at Fran’s house?” Tessa asked.

  “Um . . . three or four hours ago. I don’t know exactly. The police are there now.”

  Tessa noted everything on her pad. As if her father was a client.

  “Do you know what Tsaytis first noticed when he arrived at the house?”

  “The dogs were barking like crazy, but they were locked in the storeroom. That’s what first drew his attention. No one came out of the house. The children were always so . . . you know . . .”

  Tessa clung to her catalog of systematic and chronological questions.

  “What did he see there?”

  “He found Hank dead out in the clearing in front of the house.”

  “Did he see any wounds?”

  “Yes, bullet wounds.” Once again her father’s tortured voice fell silent.

  Tessa took a deep breath. Bullet wounds!

  “Then he went into the house?”

  “First he found Bre
ena in the children’s room.” Her father was on the verge of crying, Tessa could hear that.

  “Was Breena dressed, or was she under the covers?”

  “On the bed, not under the covers. Dressed. Tsaytis said she was shot . . . all of them were shot dead.”

  Shot dead.

  Tessa closed her eyes for a moment. As if that could make the horror go away.

  “And Kayley and Clyde?” All three of them slept in the same room in Fran and Hank’s log cabin. There wasn’t much room; it was easier to heat a small place.

  “You’ve got to come as fast as possible, Tessa. As fast as possible.” Her father was in no state to say anything more. But there was one more thing Tessa had to know.

  “What about Fran?”

  “She’s not there. She’s disappeared.”

  “What do you mean, disappeared?”

  “Nobody knows where she is. Nobody can find her.”

  Tessa heard her mother’s voice in the background.

  “Yes, she’s coming, she’s coming,” her father answered. And then he said to Tessa, “When will you fly up?”

  She looked at her watch. Almost five o’clock.

  “I will try for today but at the very latest tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll pick you up at the airport.”