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‘Sure. Soon as I see any customers I’ll give ’em a hug and ask them back home for dinner. Meanwhile all I see are assholes with backpacks.’
Grant smiled. ‘Whoooeee, Baz! Let’s hope Mr Hunt don’t break a leg when we’re on duty. So long, Sam. Keep smiling, you hear?’
They slipped forward onto a chair that Sam kicked as it moved off, leaving the boys rocking their way up the hill, their laughter dying in the deeper shadow of the pines.
Sam ran a hand over his face in exasperation. No point taking it out on his buddies. He already regretted the exchange, but it was too late to do anything about it now, short of growing wings and flying after Baz to apologize. What would he say anyway? Sorry guys. On edge today. You see I’ve been blacking out lately, and yesterday I may have just gotten into the habit of packing away a live coyote for a snack while I’m out cold.
He leaned on his shovel and looked out towards the mountains of the back bowl. The peaks of the Rockies looked back at him with a beautiful indifference. Sam turned the key in that little space at the back of his mind for a moment, allowing himself to wonder what his ancestors dreamed, planned and worried over as they moved about these peaks and valleys.
He knew what his immediate ancestors thought about. A bottle of fortified wine in a brown bag. But the ancient ones, the ones who told stories round fires instead of shuffling out of their prefabs to play bingo for liquor money, did they ever guess that life would be so different, so impossible, for the grandchildren of their grandchildren?
As if in answer, a chill wind with a cargo of drifting snowflakes eddied round the hut and tugged at Sam’s jacket. He resumed his shovelling without looking up to greet the couple of skiers who climbed onto the Beaver in a miserable silence that echoed his own.
12 (#ulink_eb481774-d071-5f75-98e7-9a989c8f273f)
He had seen that movie, The Wizard of Oz, many times before. It was always on at Christmas, when they would sit round the big old teak-boxed TV in his sister-in-law’s place, drinking beer solemnly and silently.
Calvin Bitterhand thought it was a pretty special movie, but the bit he liked the most was when the woman with the braids saw the big green city for the first time. Viewed it across some poppy fields as far as he recalled. The first time he saw Calgary he thought it was just like the green city. Not on account of being green, which it wasn’t, but the way the big tall buildings stuck straight out of the prairie, huddling together as though height was a crime on such a pool-table flat land. But then maybe all cities looked like that. This was the only one he’d ever been to. It sure didn’t look much like the green city when you were inside it though.
Right now, as he leaned against a mail-box on Centre Street, watching passers-by alter their route to walk round him like there was an invisible fence in a semi-circle ringing his sixty-one-year-old body, he thought it was a cruel and terrible place.
Five hours to go before the hostel opened up. That meant five hours trying to panhandle a few coins that could get him inside somewhere out of the biting cold that was threatening to lose him a few more fingers. The fact that it was around minus ten even here on the sunny street meant nothing to these folks. They’d just stepped out of a heated car or a heated building and were experiencing the cold as a minor inconvenience until they were back in their offices, their shops or their vehicles, and warm again.
To him the cold was a very real enemy. It had nearly killed him a couple of times. Worst one was two winters ago, in that alley in Chinatown. He’d hung around the trash cans behind a restaurant, hoping the men who came out of the kitchens for a smoke would give him food, tobacco, or in his wildest dreams, a drink. A Chinese guy in the hostel told him they sometimes did that. Didn’t tell him that they only did it for other Chinese, that they shooed Indians away like rats. The manager had come out, shouting at the smoking men in a burst of short, fast, staccato noise and then, seeing Calvin, pushed him roughly against some crates by the wall. Calvin’s tank was already reading full on a vicious moonshine he’d bought from another hostel Indian, Silas Labelle, and the push had made him topple and fall heavily behind the crates. That’s all he remembered.
The Eagle woke him up. Told him he was going to die if he didn’t try and move. Of course he didn’t want to move. He was comfortable and warm there, lying on the ground in the alley, but his spirit guide was real insistent. They flew together for a while, low over the reserve, where the children were playing by the river, and then high up into the mountains, circling in the sun with the snowy peaks glittering beneath them, until the Eagle said it was time to go back.
And he had come back, drowsy with hypothermia, two of his exposed fingers lost forever to frostbite, but alive. He’d stumbled from behind the crates, out of the alley into the street, where someone had found him and called the cops. Calvin’s left hand was now like a pig’s trotter, a remaining thumb, first and little finger serving him as best they could.
But then it was never required to do much more these days than hold the brown bag while he unscrewed the top of a bottle. Not like the old days, when his hands had had many tasks to do. Then, they gathered herbs for his magic in the woods. They cast bones and mixed powders. They took the gifts that people brought and handed over the potions they needed. Often they ran over his wife’s body and gave him pleasure. But they never held his children. The Eagle had told him many times that there would be no children. Maybe children would have stopped what had happened to him on the reserve. But maybe not.
Two businessmen were getting out of a cab on his side of the road, and Calvin hoped they would come this way and give him money. He held out his hand as they passed and the older man hesitated, put his hand into his big, warm, brown coat pocket in a hurried gesture, and threw him a dollar. The men looked away, embarrassed, as the tossed coin tinkled onto the sidewalk and Calvin bent his stiff, sore body to retrieve it. A drink would help him now, easing both the cold and his humiliation, but he hadn’t had a drink in a week. The Eagle had been quite clear about that. He had to be strong now. There had been enough self-pity, enough hiding in the sweet, deadening anaesthetic of alcohol. He needed thinking-time to decide what he was going to do about the Hunting Wolf boy.
Forty years ago of course, there would have been little to consider. He wouldn’t have taken a week to think and act: he would have known exactly how to handle this emergency. Calvin Bitterhand had been the only medicine man on Redhorn, the twenty-five square miles of Kinchuinick reserve. His house was right in the middle of Redhorn, the central village, and he had another cabin high in the hills, where he spent months practising his art and gathering herbs. They were all believers then. Sure, the white man had corrupted the tribe with his bribes and lies, turning the chief and his flunkies into puppets for their own political use. But the rest of them, the five bands who lived out their lives there, they were still Kinchuinicks, still knew who they were.
Life had been good for Calvin. He’d learned his art from the greatest of medicine men – a shaman – Eden Hunting Wolf. When Calvin’s prayers at puberty for a spirit guide had brought him the Eagle, Eden James Hunting Wolf had sought him out and taken him away from the Bitterhand band to train as his assistant. There was never any question that Calvin would be the next medicine man. Not with the Eagle choosing him. Hit Eden’s son, Moses, pretty bad though, and Eden had to sit Moses down and explain that the spirits chose whom they wished. Moses said he’d dreamed the Eagle had been his guide too, but Eden said he was lying, and Calvin could see from Moses’ face that he had been. Eden had been harsh with his son.
‘The wolf is your guide, son of mine. The wolf and nothing else. You deny him at your peril. Go now, fast for four days and run with him across our land, listening to what he tells you, seeing what he shows you. Then return and we will speak again.’
Eden had then dismissed his son and his protestations with a wave. But Moses did not build a sweat lodge or fast. Moses had sulked like a child half his age and grew distant from his father and resentful of Calvin. How he would laugh if he could see the great medicine man now, scrambling on the concrete for a thrown coin, nearly dead with cold, hunger and a liver that was ready to explode. But it was unlikely that Moses Hunting Wolf would laugh, unless laughter could come from the grave.
The wind, as if reminding him of the present, caught the hem of Calvin’s matted, stained coat and made it flutter like a diving kite.
No point in thinking about the old days and how he was respected and revered. It was now he had to think about, the last act perhaps he could perform for his people, and possibly the most important. Why, he had asked the Eagle, why would you ask an old drunk to do this? What use am I to my people? My powers have long since drowned in my impurity. But there had been no answer. It was essential. He was the only one left, and he must do it. He must do it soon.
Calvin held the dollar in his good hand and thought about how to spend it. There was a coffee shop over on First Street that wasn’t fussy who they let in. He would go in there and get warm. He needed to be warm to think.
Such great cliffs of mirrored buildings downtown, and not enough room in any of them to let Calvin Bitterhand in out of the biting wind and deadly creeping cold. The Calgary Tower peered impassively at him over the skyscrapers, standing sentinel like a white man’s totem, as he walked unsteadily along the street.
Calvin walked like a cripple, his feet dragging from ankles that were swollen and bitten by vermin, but he clutched the dollar, still warm from the businessman’s pocket, as though it held the secret to life.
The girl in the coffee shop thought about not serving him for a moment, then thought again and took his money. He found a stool in the corner and waited. She took her time, watching him out of the corner of her eye, and after what seemed like an eternity, sauntered down to his end of the counter with the jug and poured him his coffee.
Calvin cupped the mug in both hands, feeling its heat before he put it to his lips. He swallowed the hot liquid, savouring the delicious sensation as it slid down his throat into the freezing empty core of his body. He would be able to think now. He had to decide today. He knew he was already late.
It had been a week now. Seven days since he’d blacked out and had the vision; but its pungency had left a mark on his heart and on his dreams. The problem was how to get to Moses’s son before the evil went too far. That was his task. He’d flown with the Eagle to where Sam and his family lived in Silver, soaring high above the town until he’d spotted the Hunting Wolf boy going about his business, and he’d seen the great and terrible blackness there. It had been like looking down on a great black hole in the land, shooting up from the ground in a column that was growing and extending, threatening to darken the entire town. But it was two hundred miles away. And what use would he be if he got there?
Calvin looked round the room from behind his mug of coffee. None of these people would ever be safe again if he didn’t act. That darkness would reach them all eventually, one way or another, once it had been released for good. Did he care? They certainly didn’t care about him. He saw himself through their eyes. A useless, drunken old grey-haired Indian, stinking of his own dried urine, a face lined by abuse and tragedy, wearing clothes that were like diseased and peeling skins instead of fabric. He was no saviour. But the Great Spirit, he knew, cared about them all; the girl behind the counter, the two surly young men in the corner in leather jackets and jeans, the working man on the next stool wearing the overalls of an elevator company, and Calvin Bitterhand. Loved them without question or prejudice. Prejudice was man’s invention.
Yes, even though the people in this room would never know that he thought of himself as their brother, it was his duty to act on their behalf. What else could he do? To ignore the Eagle and stay would mean life would go on as normal. He could peacefully spend the last few years of his life as scum on the streets, drinking himself nearer death and crying himself to sleep in doorways.
He must go to Silver and he must go now. But he was not pure enough to face what he knew was waiting for him. Nineteen years had passed since he’d left the reserve, and in all those years he’d never performed a sun dance, or fasted, not even prayed. He was tainted with self-abuse. Broken by booze. There was only one solution. Penance. He would walk. If he didn’t make the two hundred miles, then the Great Spirit had other plans for him. But he was going to try.
Calvin swallowed the last of his coffee and managed a weak smile at the girl moving some cakes around the display.
‘Want another, chief?’
He shook his head, climbed slowly and painfully off his stool and walked over to where she stood on the other side of the plastic-covered counter. She stopped toying with her cakes and straightened up to confront him. Calvin put his hands on the counter to steady himself, noticing her eyes flicking to the gaps where his fingers used to be. He held up his head and spoke to her softly.
‘I have a long journey now. No more money. You give me food?’
The waitress, Marie-Anne MacDonald, looked back at him and found herself hesitating. Normally she gave old bums the treatment they deserved. If they couldn’t pay they hit the street. You slipped one of them an old danish or a doughnut past its sell-by, and before you knew where you were you had a string of them hanging around the door expecting to be fed like dogs. It was her butt on the line and if Jack came in and saw her giving charity to any old scrounger it would certainly be her who’d get it in the neck. Okay, it wasn’t a great job, but it was a job. The shop shut at four so she had all afternoon to watch the soaps and then get ready to go out with Alan. Suited her fine, and she wasn’t going to lose it for a bum. Anyway, these people could work if they wanted to. They just didn’t want to. Look at her. She had to work didn’t she? Sure, she’d like to stand around all day drinking, but she came in here at seven-thirty every day to earn her crust, and she hated these Indian bums who thought life owed them a living. She let them in so she could take their money off them, the money they’d begged from some sucker, and then throw them out when they got comfortable. Marie-Anne sometimes wished she could teach the useless pigs that white people weren’t all one big welfare cheque.
At least that was the rule she lived by normally. This guy was different. When he looked at her just then, his black shiny eyes fixing her with a stare, there was no self-pity in them, no pleading or cajoling. More like defiance, as if he were ordering her to do something she knew she had to but had forgotten.
And she caught a strange scent from him, not of piss and liquor, but of a fresh wind and trees, the way washed sheets smell when they’ve been out on the line blowing in the spring breeze.
Made her think of when she was little and she and her father picnicked on the Bow River, way out of town. The mountains were like a jagged cut-out in the distance, and she would run through the pines, laughing as she fell in the long grass in the clearing between the trees. The smell was the same. Green, wet, fresh, delicious.
Marie-Anne, still looking into Calvin’s watery black eyes, put a hand absently into the refrigerated display case in the front of the counter, scooped eight cling-wrapped sandwiches into a bag and handed it to him.
Calvin took it, nodded to her and slowly, wearily, left the shop. She watched him go, transfixed as his hunched figure pushed the door open and shuffled past the window out of sight.
Eight sandwiches. She was in for it if she couldn’t account for how eight sandwiches walked right out of the cool shelf. Each one was worth a dollar sixty, in fact one had been a jumbo shrimp mayo, worth two dollars seventy-five. Without thinking she went into her pocket book under the coffee machine, took out thirteen dollars and put them in the till. Jack would never know. The elevator maintenance man called for another cup of coffee and Marie-Anne went to pour it, with a smile on her face that would last her until closing, although then, as now, she couldn’t tell you why.
13 (#ulink_4e264565-b592-5ff1-b14b-491432f57afc)
It would be out of his hands in a few hours. The worst thing, as always, was that the media would go apeshit. Craig stared at Brenner’s slim report as if it told him he had a week to live. Instead, it told him loud and clear that Joe hadn’t died in a car accident, told him that Joe had been ripped apart and then tipped over the gorge as an afterthought.
There had been some grim excitement when the truck driver had been found, the one who kicked his own bucket on the highway. But when they hauled in the body there had been absolutely no sign of blood, a weapon or even a struggle. Zilch. The guy was clean as a whistle. In short, that poor bastard was certainly the last guy over the pass and probably the only witness they were going to get; but Craig was sure that no way did he murder Joe Reader.
He put his hands to his face and mashed the skin round his eyes. They would send someone from Edmonton now. The rules said you couldn’t lead an investigation if you were personally involved, and boy, was he involved. The guy who did that to Joe would know how involved if he ever found himself in a room with Craig.
He let his gaze wander from the document of doom on the desk to the window, where the falling snow was thicker than the fake stuff they used to chuck around on a John Denver Christmas special.
How to deal with the media. That was the next big one. Craig could just imagine how the ratings-hungry louses were going to cover this. What made better copy than a murder in a tourist town, where the biggest stink is usually some skis getting stolen, or some guy winning a busted face in a bar brawl? Suddenly, there’s a jackpot; two patrollers dying in a freak avalanche explosives accident, then a murder that would make Stephen King say yuk. All against a backdrop of folks having winter-wonderland fun in the snow. Christ, it would have the American networks circling Silver like crows round a carcass.
Bad thought. It made him see Joe again. Or what had been left of Joe. Craig sighed and replayed the tape in his head one more time. Joe’s pick-up was the second last vehicle to cross the pass that night. The truck came after. He was sure of that. Seen the tracks himself. The murderer couldn’t possibly have survived up there without a vehicle, so either he was in Joe’s car, or Legat’s.
Or both. Craig’s mouth opened slightly. Or both. In Joe’s truck as far as the gorge then hitched a ride in the Peterbilt. He got excited. Then he stopped getting excited. Joe’s truck had been pushed over the edge. Something really powerful had pushed it. A single killer and some old truck driver with a dodgy heart couldn’t possibly have done it by themselves. It would have taken either ten men or another vehicle, at least another pick-up. The snow that had fallen relentlessly for at least ten hours after the event made sure they would never know the answer to that one. A murderer couldn’t have chosen better conditions to cover his tracks. And anyway, why would someone like the Legat guy have taken part in such a foul deed? His records showed he was just a regular trucker: no record, nothing untoward, and strangely, for someone who just took the coward’s way out, nothing to suggest he would want to. The suicides Craig had dealt with in twenty years of policing were usually caused by drink, gambling debts, sexual problems or mental illness. Ernie Legat didn’t seem to suffer from any of them. Was he forced to do something despicable? Was that why he had committed suicide? Didn’t make sense. He would have just driven straight to the RCs if there had been any funny business and he’d survived. Craig pulled himself up. Legat wasn’t murdered, remember, just died of the cold. For the hundredth time he asked himself what the hell were they dealing with here.
The local TV and radio stations had covered the ski patrol deaths and Wolf River Valley Cable had run some crap about the dangers of avalanching. But this was the real thing. A bloody, messy, unexplained, motiveless cop-killing, bound to go network, and he shrank at the prospect. If their man was a psycho, headline news wouldn’t help. Where was the piece of shit now? That’s what he needed to know. The son of a bitch could be walking round town collecting for the blind as far as Craig knew, since right now Silver had more strangers than residents. That was, if he was still here. What if he was going the other way? To Stoke. He dismissed it. Instinct told Craig McGee the murderer was headed towards Silver.
He pushed the button on his phone. ‘Holly, I’m going out for an hour or two. Tell Sergeant Morris to hold the fort.’
It crackled back. ‘He’s out here already. There’s some messages. Do you need them now?’
Craig smiled. His wife used to say Holly was like something out of Twin Peaks. Even if he wanted to dispute it, his secretary gave him cause every day to give in and agree.
‘Well that’s for you to say. You know what they are.’
‘I guess they can wait.’
He released the button and grabbed his storm jacket from the peg.
Outside the privacy of his room, in the open-plan office, the place was buzzing. All eighteen constables were on duty, leave cancelled, and what looked like most of them were milling round the operations board like they were waiting for something to happen on its own. It seemed like colour marker pens were more fun than getting out there and doing some police work.
Craig searched for Morris. He saw him sitting on the edge of a desk talking into a phone like he was a Hollywood theatrical agent, holding the phone beneath his chin and gesticulating to whoever was unfortunate enough to be on the other end with both hands. Not today, thought Craig. Today he couldn’t find the energy to play boss with this herd. Constable Daniel Hawk was at his desk studying the photos of Joe’s truck. Craig flicked him on the shoulder as he passed.
‘Going up to the pass to look round the site again. You want to get me up there in your Ford, constable?’
Daniel got up without speaking, put on his hat and followed his superior officer out into the car park.
The snow was getting silly now. Ploughs were doing their best, with the skiing traffic crawling behind them like ducklings after their mother, but it looked as if the snow would win by dark. Silver was going to be blocked off again. At least by road. A long discordant hoot from the distance sounded like the freight train on its way down the mountain was laughing at the cars. The tracks were clear now after the explosion, and those mile-long iron snakes of coal kept rolling through like nothing had happened. Daniel drove slowly and silently, accepting his place humbly in the line of cars.
Craig glanced across at him. ‘So how many colours have we managed to get on the wipe-clean?’
Daniel smiled. ‘We’re working on ten. But there’s still a debate about whether the truck driver should be pink or green.’
‘I wasn’t being funny, Hawk. I was expressing displeasure.’
‘I know, sir.’
Craig looked out the window, paused a while. ‘How are the guys coping with it? The fact it was Joe, I mean.’
Daniel made a little shrug, his eyes fixed on the white mess ahead. ‘They cope. You know. Angry I guess, but they figure we’ll get him.’
‘And you?’
‘The same.’
Daniel was putting up a defence shield. Craig could feel it, but he carried on.
‘Joe wasn’t seeing anyone else or anything, was he?’
‘Not to my knowledge. You knew him as well as me.’
‘Sure. But you bowled with him. He would have said if anything was wrong.’
Daniel took his eyes off the road for the first time, and shot his staff sergeant a look. The traffic slowed behind the plough in sympathy.
‘Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind, sir?’
‘And what’s that?’
‘That Joe was half-blood Cree and I’m full Kinchuinick, so we must have been best of buddies. That’s what you’re getting at isn’t it? The only Indians, even half-Indians, in the detachment, and we’re bound to stick together.’
Craig lowered his eyes. ‘Come on, Hawk. That’s not what I meant.’
‘I think it’s exactly what you meant. Sir.’
Daniel Hawk was right of course, but Craig wasn’t going to let his clumsy mishandling of the constable stand in the way of what he wanted to know. ‘Okay.’ He gave in softly, paused again, thinking. ‘I just wondered if there was anything cultural, anything particular to Native Canadians I wouldn’t know. Something that might have escaped me.’
Daniel Hawk continued to look straight ahead. Craig, over his embarrassment now, was starting to get annoyed. ‘Aw Christ, Hawk. I’m fucking sorry if it’s not politically correct to notice the fact that you and Joe happened to share some Indian blood.’
‘We didn’t. I repeat. He was half-Cree. I’m full Kinchuinick.’
‘Whatever. Quit acting like I just swindled Manhattan off you for a dollar and answer the question. Was there anything going on with Joe I should know about?’
Constable Hawk threw him that look again, then decided he’d turned the knife enough. He looked at last like he was thinking instead of brooding. ‘Nah. Nothing. He was pretty stable with Estelle and all. I didn’t notice anything weird.’
Hawk’s boss nodded solemnly. It was just as Craig thought. He’d have known if there had been anything wrong with his sergeant. It was just that niggling little maggot of insecurity that white cops have when dealing with Indians that made Craig even bring the topic up. He was sorry he had to. He never thought of Joe as anything but Joe. And whether Daniel Hawk believed it or not, he thought only of him as a damned good constable. So what that they’d been the only two Native Canadians in the detachment? The detachment also boasted one Sikh, a German and a half-Japanese. It was worth checking. Anything was worth checking. They had precious little else to go on.
Daniel drove on in silence but he was still thinking. Craig could practically hear the wheels turning in there.
‘What? There’s something. Isn’t there?’
Hawk shook his head. ‘Nah. It’s nothing about Joe. It’s the cultural bit that made me think of something.’
‘Tell me.’ Craig was hungry for it. Whatever it was.
Daniel looked grim, fighting to analyse whatever it was he’d conjured up.
‘Okay, like I say, it’s probably nothing. In fact, given the time involved it’s absolutely, definitely, nothing. But the way Joe died. It made me think of something else. That’s all.’
Craig turned his body towards Daniel. ‘Go on.’
‘I saw something like it. While I was policing on Redhorn. But it happened around twenty years ago.’
Craig tried to work it out. Daniel Hawk was only thirty-five years old, tops. How could he have presided over a murder at the tender age of fifteen? They were recruiting young into the Mounties, but not that young.
‘I don’t understand, Hawk. What do you mean you saw it?’
‘I said the murder happened over twenty years ago. That’s what the forensics guys came up with. We only found the mutilated remains of the body six years ago. It got dug up by some white construction guys who were pile-driving for the new rodeo centre. Course if it’d been found by Indians it would never have been reported. That’s the Kinchuinick way. Keeps the reserve a tight community. Makes police work almost impossible. The person, whoever it was, hadn’t even been reported missing.’
Craig tried to work this out. ‘So you uncovered an old body killed over two decades ago that was similar in its disfigurement to Joe’s injuries?’
‘Not similar. Identical.’
