Closs says nothing, absent-mindedly drinks his bad coffee. I don’t think it’s my position to leave him in peace, so I keep asking questions.
“And the crate? Where is it?”
“Still in Happy Valley-Goose Bay with the medical examiner.”
I suppress a sigh. So I won’t be able to see it all that quickly.
“Has the ME discovered something by now?”
“Rough-cut wood; the perp probably sawed it himself. A lot of people do that here. There’s a symbol burned into the wood.”
I’m amazed. It’s the nonchalant way that the sergeant passes on such decisive information.
“What kind of symbol?”
“A Viking sign.”
“Well, what does it look like?”
“Three interlocking triangles. It was burned into the wood.”
“How?”
“Probably with a hot iron.”
“Is there a practicing Viking cult around here?”
“Viking cult?”
He looks at me as if I’ve asked him what the capital of the Ivory Coast is.
“There are people who are completely obsessed with Viking culture. They dress like Vikings and get together for Viking rituals. Or what they think the rituals are.”
My explanation doesn’t help. He shakes his head.
“There’s a Viking house here, a reconstruction. Built for the tourists.”
“Where is it?”
“At Savage Beach. About three kilometers outside Port Brendan.”
At the beach where the crate with Lorna’s skeleton was found. Closs stands up abruptly.
“We should get her in here,” he says.
I guess right away what he means. We put on our jackets, go to the SUV, and carry the heavy metal box into the office together. An odd way to transport bones. Then it occurs to me why metal was chosen. Inspector Allen didn’t want to stick Lorna into a wooden crate again. The thought reconciles me to him.
Closs unlocks the metal box and opens the lid. We both stare at the skull, the pelvic bones, the neatly stacked ribs and vertebrae, leg and arm bones. I’m amazed at how little has been scattered around. Many of them are still marked with a label. Each one has Lorna’s name on it, the name of the bone, and the stamp of the medical examiner’s office.
I search for suspicious clues on the skull but can’t find any. A pile of bones. That’s all that remains of a young woman in love who had her whole life before her. That could be me. A skeleton in the ground. My Greek Orthodox parents would have never had me cremated, although they do live in Canada now. What was Lorna thinking during her final minutes? What did she feel? Was everything a dark fog? Or was it terror? Panic? Pain? As I felt? Fear that this was the end?
Closs closes the lid.
“Constable, is everything okay?”
I look at him in surprise. I hope I carried it off all right. Maybe Closs was waiting for a sign of instability, peculiar behavior, a clue that I’m not fit for work. He has surely been alerted.
“Of course. I . . . ”
A man comes into the room. He walks so softly that we hardly hear him.
Closs looks up.
“Fred, what is it?”
“The parents are here. They’re in the car out front.” He glances at me briefly. “They heard that we have the skeleton.”
“Fred, this is our colleague, Calista Gates.”
“Fred van Heisen.”
He shakes my hand, a firm grip, but he looks at me only briefly.
Dark. That’s my first impression of him. Dark eyes, eyebrows, hair, self-contained expression. Good-looking.
He immediately turns back to Closs.
“What do we tell them?”
“We don’t need the bones anymore. No reason to keep the people waiting.”
I intervene before anything happens.
“Can they come in? Maybe they’ve got some questions for us?” And we for them, I add to myself.
Closs has no objection.
After van Heisen turns around, I call: “Wait!”
They both look at me, baffled.
“Do we tell them what’s happened to the little finger?”
Van Heisen raises his eyebrows in question.
“Her left little finger was separated when Lorna was still alive,” I inform him.
Closs makes a snap decision.
“No, not yet. We won’t give out this information for now. We and the perp are the only ones to know.”
5
Lorna’s mother spots the metal box at once when she comes in.
“Is she in there?”
Closs nods. Van Heisen fades into the background. Lorna’s father stands in the room, bent over; his powerfully built wife blocks his view of the box.
“We want a beautiful coffin for her, but I don’t want to see her remains. I want to keep her alive in my memory.”
Since nobody reacts to her wish, I step up.
“The undertaker can do that for you.”
I remember that Closs pointed out the funeral home on our ride.
She looks at me, aware of me for the first time.
“You’re the new one, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m Calista Gates. I’d like to express my sincere condolences. We will do everything we can to find the person who did your daughter wrong.”
Lorna’s mother starts to cry. I go over to her and put my arms around her. That’s a privilege of women police officers. Physical contact.
“Now it will be simpler to solve the case, won’t it?” her mother sobs. “Now that you’ve found my girl.”
I can’t tell her that the murderer wanted Lorna’s bones to be discovered on the beach. That he might have been sending a message that way. Which gives me some hope. The hope he’s making a mistake.
I slowly let go of Lorna’s mother.
“We’re pleased that we finally know more about what happened to Lorna.”
“How did she die?”
I look at Closs, and he nods without saying a word. He lets me have the floor.
“She was strangled.”
The mother’s hand flies to her mouth. Lorna’s taciturn father looks at the floor.
“Who’d do a thing like that to her? She’s never done anything to anybody.”
I’ve heard those two statements often. They are so true. And so false. There are cruel people. Without pity. Without feelings of guilt.
“We’re working to find that out. If you have any information at all that can help us further, please let us know.”
“We’ve already told the RCMP everything. You can’t know that—you’re new here—but we’ve told the police everything.”
“Time and again there are some details,” I say, “that you don’t think are important and that are overlooked. That’s often been my experience. We need your cooperation in order to better help you.”
She nods, wipes her tears away with a handkerchief.
I blurt out a question. “Mrs. Taylor, did Lorna wear a ring?”
“Yes, I think so, more than one. Why do you ask?”
“Because we didn’t find any of her rings. Did she wear any other jewelry?”
As long as the sergeant doesn’t stop me, I’ll keep going.
“Jewelry? A gold chain around her neck. A birthday present from us.”
She starts crying again. I put a hand on her arm. Time to end the questioning. We’ll pick it up again after the funeral.
“We’ll help you bring Lorna to the funeral home if you’d like.”
Lorna’s father speaks up for the first time.
“We’ll do it.”
Lorna is with her family once again.
Van Heisen helps him carry the metal box. I close the door behind them and stay back.
“Her parents just came by themselves, no sons, relatives. Don’t you find that strange, Sergeant?”
They told me in Vancouver that people in Labrador function by clan. Family and relatives evidently play an enormous
ly important role. If that’s true, shouldn’t Lorna’s parents have brought family members or other relatives along at this difficult hour? But they came without any support. I try to figure that out.
Closs shrugs.
“They still have three sons. They work in the Alberta tar sands.”
I remember that. The brothers were never under suspicion because they were all away. Lorna was the only daughter.
“Could her parents have suspected that the killer’s in the family? Or a close relative? They never said so, I mean. Just a dark thought.”
“Maybe. But they’ve never talked about it.”
The sergeant doesn’t stop me. That’s a good sign. But he doesn’t contribute much to the conversation. For him it’s an old case that he’s been dragging around for three years. Still, he should be happy that the investigation is moving ahead again.
Noise and voices in the hallway. Seconds later two men are in the room.
“Since when do we close the doors around here?” one of them shouts. “Is that what they do in Vancouver?”
The second man holds out his hand to me.
“I’m Frank Delgado. Don’t pay any attention to my friend Sullivan; he’s got a reputation all over for his big mouth—am I right, Austin?”
“Do I have to be politically correct now, or what? Are we going to have to paint rainbow stripes on the walkway to the supermarket for people of whatever sex it is?”
“Shut up, Austin, or there’ll be trouble.”
Austin Sullivan, I already have the feeling, will be my opponent for a while. His blond hair is longer than usual for the RCMP; it falls over his forehead, giving him the aura of a pirate.
Frank Delgado, short, but muscular, might be the type who secretly enjoys Sullivan’s transgressions. Been there, seen that. Why should it be any different in Port Brendan?
Closs defuses the situation.
“Now that everybody’s here, we can begin the morning meeting.”
Sullivan grins.
“Morning meeting. All of a sudden we’re so formal, Sarge. I’ll have to write with a fountain pen from now on.”
“A gold-tipped fountain pen,” Delgado adds.
Closs ignores the two.
“Constable Gates, I’d like an outside view of the Lorna Taylor case. What are your initial impressions?”
Now he’s showcasing me. And I’ve just arrived. Some kind of speedy reversal! I feel all eyes are on me. Come on, Calista, you know the drill. It’s a piece of cake for you.
“As you can imagine, I’m not yet familiar with all the facts in detail.” Eye contact with all those present, Calista! “I’ve read up on the case documents. But I don’t know as yet what’s in the medical examiner’s report.”
Closs breaks in.
“Initial impressions are sometimes the best. Shoot.”
“I’m assuming that the victim knew the killer or killers. How well is hard to say because everyone in a small town knows everyone in some way or another. But it’s possible that she got into the perp’s car on her way to the restaurant. Maybe simply to have a brief chat with him—”
“Or her.” That was Sullivan, naturally.
“I mean to say a male or a female perp—or several. To talk to him or her because it was so cold that day, and it wasn’t very pleasant to be standing around. I can imagine that Lorna was murdered in Happy Valley-Goose Bay and her body was brought to Port Brendan. Inspector Allen told me that the road was passable for several days in the first half of December. Many folks apparently went shopping in Happy Valley-Goose Bay at the time. The perp is probably from Port Brendan; at least he knows his way around here; he knew where to sink a wooden crate in the water without being seen. Or if he were seen, people would think nothing of it. He wasn’t conspicuous.”
Delgado stirs his coffee noisily. I see out of the corner of my eye that he’s drowned three heaping spoons of sugar. Three.
Since nobody has any remarks, I go on.
“There’s probably a personal element to this murder. Lorna was strangled by someone’s bare hands so that her tongue bone and her larynx were injured. Strong feelings were a motivating factor: hate, jealousy, rejection, bruised ego . . . revenge. Under these circumstances, Lorna could also be a surrogate for something the perp hates.”
I notice the door’s ajar. I must speak to my colleagues about that. The reception area where Wendy works is within earshot. I lower my voice a little.
“I think it’s noteworthy—and I’m sure I’m not telling you anything new—that the killer wanted to preserve her bones. As a trophy or . . . ” I hesitate, searching for the right word. “Or as a means of extending his revenge. Maybe he returned to the hiding place again and again to look at the bones. Until a few months ago. Something must have happened at that time that caused the perp to relocate the crate to the beach. So that it would be found. What that might mean . . . right now I can’t even hazard a guess.”
Van Heisen clears his throat.
“Maybe his ego isn’t so hurt anymore. Maybe he’s received some gratification because of some event or change in his life.”
Van Heisen surprises me; that’s an interesting theory.
Before I can answer, Sullivan barges in.
“Fred, you’re getting ahead of yourself. And you’re feeding your partner her lines. Good teamwork.”
I look at Closs. He hasn’t revealed that Fred and I are partners.
Closs pays no attention to Sullivan, keeps his eyes on me.
So I go on.
“One aspect has me puzzled. Maybe you can make some sense of it since you know the area. There was a Viking symbol burned into one of the crate boards. Three interlocking triangles.”
I haven’t had time to look up the significance of this on the internet, but Delgado does it now on his iPhone.
“Odin’s knot,” he announces, “a symbol for slain warriors. Odin’s a god in Germanic mythology.”
“Gates asked me if there’s a Viking cult here,” Closs interjects.
Sullivan pounces on it.
“A cult? With orgies and sacrifices to the gods or what?”
I shake my head.
“Many people dress up as Vikings and celebrate feasts with specific rituals.”
“We have some locals who dress up as Vikings,” Closs explains. “For the tourists in summer. Like in L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.”
I know about L’Anse aux Meadows. A tourist magnet. There were excavations in the sixties. Archeologists discovered that Vikings had built a temporary settlement there about a thousand years ago. It’s now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Delgado makes a dismissive gesture.
“The symbol doesn’t have to mean anything. People hawk Viking stuff in the supermarket and gas stations, for tourists.”
I don’t think his argument holds water. But nobody contradicts him, including me, and he gathers steam.
“My dear colleague, you’re right to say it’s all conjecture, speculation. In the final analysis, it could also be a sexual crime. Lorna was raped, and the perp murdered her. To cover his tracks, he deposited the body in Port Brendan.”
“We can’t exclude that; you make a good point.” My standard answer, to signal flexibility. “We only know that the killer didn’t strangle her with a scarf or stocking or some other instrument. He did it with his bare hands, so brutally that even her larynx was injured. It takes a lot of strength and rage to accomplish that.”
“Believe me, colleague, there’s a whole slew of men here that can exercise that much force,” Delgado says with a laugh, and Sullivan joins in.
I’m about to say that the question isn’t whether they can do it but if they are prepared to when Closs intervenes.
“Thank you for your input, Gates. We’ll keep up the questioning in the town and surrounding area. I’m redistributing the assignments. Gates, you read the new documents and create a situation report with all the important facts. But first I’ll take you to your house.”
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He gets up.
“One question, Sarge,” Delgado says, “about that situation report. I’m a bit confused. Is Constable Gates leading the inquiry?”
Ah, trench warfare has already begun. I hope it lasts only for a few weeks and not the whole time I’m here.
Closs doesn’t bat an eyelash. The man keeps his nerve.
“You’re confused? Well, that’s a new one, Delgado. None of us has ever seen you confused. And another thing: some of us should go to the funeral and keep our eyes and ears open.”
“Let’s send our new colleague,” Sullivan retorts. “That’ll give folks something to gawk at.”
I’m keen to see if the sarge lets that one go. Straightaway he gets off the hook with the reply: “If that’s the case, then it’s more suitable for you and Frank. We want to watch the people in mourning and not the other way around. Don’t forget that.”
Delgado is already at the door.
“Will do, Sarge. Funerals are a big event around here. Even bigger than Netflix.”
I have to give Delgado credit: he’s not easily offended. But I’m not so sure about Sullivan.
I glance over at Fred van Heisen. He’s the only one still seated and acts as if he didn’t register the exchange. He has a serious look on his face. Maybe that’s the only expression at his disposal. Or maybe he doesn’t think there’s anything funny about Lorna’s fate. Heaven knows what’s going on in his head. There’ll be plenty of time to find out.
Closs says we should get going. I discover on our way through Port Brendan that the town is divided into small clusters of houses in several coves. The sarge explains that three hundred years or so ago each fisherman chose a cove and settled there. Only the center of town, where the police station is, lies on a rather elongated stretch of coast. It turns out that the rocky point of the bay, where my new home is, juts out into the ocean like an index finger, so you can see the center of town from there. I’m relieved. At least I won’t feel cut off from the rest of the village.
The road to the bay is plowed. We stop in front of a little house with an olive-green vinyl facade and red window trim. A spot of color—that’s nice. The other four buildings are closer to the shore and white or gray; they’re just partly visible behind huge piles of snow.
CRIES FROM THE COLD: A bone-chilling mystery thriller. (Detective Calista Gates 1) Page 4