“No.”
“Ever spaced out?”
I know exactly what he means by that. That’s something I can’t let him think happens to me.
“No, never.”
“Problems concentrating?”
I shake my head.
“Panic attacks?”
“Everything’s normal since I’ve been on the medications.”
I am worried, however, that I found my basement door open again yesterday. Something’s not right. I’ll have to change the lock.
To my astonishment, the doctor smiles at me and announces: “Well, continue taking them regularly, and come back in three weeks if nothing’s changed.”
I’ve heard rumors that it’s easy to get a sick note from Dr. Perrell. Maybe he’s happy to have somebody who absolutely wants to work for a change.
“Do you like it here?” he asks as he renews my prescription.
“I need to get accustomed to it.” Then I respond to his questioning glance: “I’m a city person.”
“I know Vancouver a bit. I was there for the Olympics, as an emergency doctor. I have very fond memories of that time.”
“Do you have a hat from those Olympics?”
He’s taken aback. “A hat?”
“As a memento of a beautiful time,” I quickly add. That was a little too direct. A disruption in the hospital hierarchy. I’m the patient, he’s the doctor.
He answers nonetheless: “No. But I still have a jacket with the logo somewhere.”
I want to keep him in a good mood; he controls my health records. “And you, how do you like it here?”
“I’ve found my mission in life,” he says, almost solemnly.
Nevertheless, I’m cold. As if I’d have to stay here my whole life long, too. Dr. Perrell gives me the prescription, then shakes my hand again in farewell. I’m dismissed.
Once outside, I take the air deep into my lungs with relief, but it’s too cold. Heaps of snow lay siege to the sidewalks. The pharmacy is right across the street. I walk over to it. Salt has softened the snow, but not everywhere. I slip on a frozen spot, row with my arms, and manage to catch myself at the last second. One thing I know: I mustn’t take a blow to the head ever again or everything will get exponentially worse. Fred van Heisen comes toward me in the pharmacy. He quickly sticks a pillbox into his jacket pocket. He seems almost embarrassed, as if I might guess what medications he’s on.
“Were you able to talk to Gerald Hynes?” he asks.
“No. He’s at a gun-safety course today.”
We are in a corner where nobody can hear us.
“How far did you get?” I ask.
“You can’t buy a blue garbage bag in Port Brendan or anywhere else around here. But they’ve got them at Critch’s in Corner Brook. Worth seeing if anybody can remember who bought something like that. What’s new with you?”
“Shannon Wilkey is on deck today. I’ve tried calling her but only got her voice mail. So I’m on my way there now.”
“I’ll go with you.” It comes out like a shot.
I take note of his sudden interest. Maybe Closs told him something about an exciting blonde as well. As far as I know, Fred has a girlfriend back in Saskatchewan.
“Sure,” I agree.
The pharmacist is behind the counter. I’ll give him my prescription another time. I don’t want Fred to witness it. A teenager pushes his way past us and heads for the front door.
The girl on the cash register shouts at him: “Don’t forget to pay, or the Brown Man will get you!”
Something clicks in my brain. Kris Bakie used this expression yesterday.
“What’s with the Brown Man?” I ask the cashier.
She looks surprised at first, then she laughs.
“Oh, it just a saying. Old people would try to scare us with it. ‘Don’t go to Savage Beach, or the Brown Man will eat you.’ Of course we’d go anyway. It’s kind of a superstition.”
“Why is he called the Brown Man?”
“Because he wore clothes made of animal skins. Like brown suede.”
“Why did old people not want anyone to go to Savage Beach?”
“As I said, superstition. Although the Viking house was built close by; it is made of earth and sod, like in Newfoundland. For the tourists.”
The pharmacist pushes himself into the conversation, a man of imposing size.
“There are a lot of superstitions around here. My great-uncle was always searching for buried treasures. Somebody told him that blood had to be spilled in order to find it. Cut off a man’s head, or a cat’s.”
I’m all ears. Fred listens with a frown.
The pharmacist is in his element. “I think my great-uncle was a little bit nuts. But he finally did find something in the ground. An old coffin from the French period.” He grins. “In the old days, nobody bought a broom in May because it was always said: ‘Never buy a broom in May, or tomorrow will be your final day.’”
I want to know more.
“Did your great-uncle cut an animal’s head off in a search for treasure?”
“Knowing him, yes, probably. He had a screw loose.”
“We’ve got to go,” Fred urges.
I thank them both and go with Fred out into the cruel, cold air. He pulls a cap with ear flaps over his head. He doesn’t look happy.
“Now we’ve solved the puzzle: somebody wants to find treasure, so they decapitated an animal to spill some blood. And we’re wasting our time.”
I squeeze my nose shut briefly because the cold hurts. “Does that mean you don’t want to come along to Shannon Wilkey’s?”
Of course he wants to come, in spite of the superstition. Thought so.
“Let’s take the route over the ice,” my enigmatic colleague decrees.
That means a ride on the snowmobile yet again and not in the heated SUV. I feel like an astronaut on Mars, with my ski outfit and the helmet on my head. It’s definitely warmer there than down here.
“All right. But I’d like to see the Viking house first.”
“Are we sightseeing today, or are we working on an investigation?” he asks.
“Aren’t I supposed to know my way around this place?” I retort. “In my duty manual it says I must make myself thoroughly familiar with the area. Besides, the crate and the skeleton were found below the Viking house.”
I take his incomprehensible muttering as agreement.
It’s not even ten in the morning when we speed over the rough icy surface that’s no longer recognizably the North Atlantic. Fred takes the lead; his snowmobile is probably twice as heavy as mine. A moist film covers my visor in no time because I forgot to push the helmet’s ventilator button. I flip the visor up but am almost immediately blinded by all that whiteness. I have to stop to put on my sunglasses.
At that moment the cloud cover tears apart, and the sun’s rays shoot like streams of fire onto the ice and the coast. I blink hard. The landscape is transformed into a fantastic backdrop. The coast looks like a black-and-white-sprinkled icy wave that blissfully froze as it withdrew into the sea. The blue sky glorifies it all; even the white powdered forest seems harmless, an endless ocean of miniature trees. Port Brendan looks almost beautiful from afar. What a transformation!
Just as I’m about to start up again, I discover a striking outline of something on the shore. It must be the reconstructed Viking house. I get my binoculars out of the compartment under my seat. The glass steams up, and I have to keep rubbing it clear. I hear Fred call but ignore him because, in my field of view, there’s a silver Ski-Doo with a broad green stripe parked beside the Viking house. I just keep standing there until Fred has no choice but to come back. He stops and takes off his helmet.
“What’s the matter?”
“Kris Bakie’s Ski-Doo is over there.”
I stopped speaking of instinct long ago. When men with the police speak of it, they’re hailed as having magnificent observational skills; if it’s a woman, people smile her concerns away as esot
eric gut feelings.
By way of an answer, Fred puts his helmet back on. The nearer we come to the Viking house, the more it looms up as an astonishingly big, elongated building. A pointed, grass-covered roof juts partway out of a snowdrift; low chimneys grow like pinnacles out of its ridge. The wind has swept the roof clear of snow but has piled it up on the south wall. We circle the building. There are two entrances at the back, protected by small gable roofs. The wind didn’t pack this side with snow; the doors are practically clear. Only the silver snowmobile lies a little ways off, half buried in snow.
Impressed, I swing off my Ski-Doo. So that’s how the Vikings lived a thousand years ago on the edge of the North American continent. I don’t know much about Viking history, but as I see it, the copy of the sod house looks authentic.
“Do you know anything about the Vikings, Fred?”
He shrugs. “Not much. They called Labrador ‘Markland.’ They came from Greenland. And . . .”
He’s carefully inspecting the snowmobile.
I give up trying to learn about the Vikings from him. “I’ll take a look around inside.”
The first door is stuck. I push against the wood, but nothing gives. I try the second entrance. The door opens at once.
It’s pitch-black inside; my eyes adjust slowly to the dark after the glaring white. I stuff my gloves away, get out my phone, and illuminate the windowless space. The light beam reveals a crudely carved low bench against a wall of dried clay; stripped tree trunks above it support the roof. Casks and woven baskets are lying around with a smattering of small wooden buckets. Thin reeds seal up the sloping roof.
I grope my way forward, tumbling over coils of rope. Suddenly I see a pair of boots on the floor. My pulse races. The small beam of light wanders over a human body. A dark-green jacket. Large spots on it.
“Fred!” I yell.
A man is lying on his stomach and not moving.
Fred is at the entrance; he hesitates for a moment, then catches sight of the lifeless body and rushes to it. I kneel. The dark-green winter jacket is torn in three places. Probably knife wounds. Blood encrusted on it has darkened. Fred mutters something beside me. We turn the body over carefully. An Inuk. Face smeared with blood, but I recognize him instantly.
Kris Bakie.
I feel for a pulse. Nothing. The man’s hand is ice-cold and rigid.
Fred touches Bakie, too. He shakes his head. “Can’t do anything.”
The head injury looks bad. I feel dizzy.
Somebody wanted to bash in his skull and almost did.
Fred gets up. “I’ll call the station.”
I take a deep breath. Stay calm. Think. Stab wounds in the back. Somebody probably knocked Bakie down with a blow to the head, then attacked him with a knife or some such weapon. I hear Fred outside requesting help over the police radio. I lean over the dead man.
“Who did this to you, Kris? Who was it?”
We’ll see if the Brown Man has gotten Shannon.
Fred’s at my side again.
“The boss is coming with people from Emergency. They’re sending a Cessna from Happy Valley-Goose Bay. They think it’ll take an hour.”
An hour. Happy Valley-Goose Bay is more than three hundred kilometers away. But the weather’s good. If it doesn’t change from one minute to the next. Just like death changes everything from one second to the next.
Kris Bakie and I were talking together just yesterday: a self-confident young man with a splendid future ahead of him. An award-winning, nationally known chef, who wanted to help the people in his homeland. Melissa Richards was so much in love with this Inuk that she broke off her relationship with Gerald Hynes for him.
After all these years with the RCMP, I’ve still not gotten used to the finality of death. Gone. Finished. Forever. Kris Bakie is not coming back.
I caress the dead man with my gaze because I can’t stroke his hand. Mustn’t wipe out any evidence.
“I think he wanted to meet Shannon Wilkey here,” I whisper.
17
My knees hurt. I stand up.
“Can you take over? I’ll go get my flashlight.”
My phone battery drains much too quickly in the cold.
Fred nods, and I go outside. The glistening brightness hits me like a spotlight. I put my sunglasses back on in a hurry. In front of the door, I can see my footsteps. And Fred’s. But there are even more tracks. Boot prints. They must be the victim’s and the perp’s. The wind blew away the soft new snow during the night, uncovering the footprints. That means Kris Bakie has been lying here since yesterday. I photograph the prints with my cell phone. Then I discover snowmobile tracks. They go uphill to the edge of the woods. Snow is really good for leaving a tell-tale trail.
I turn my head toward the iced-over ocean. Somebody came from there to here. I noticed these tracks when we approached the Viking house. We’ll compare them to the profile of Bakie’s machine. I can already guess what we’ll find. Yesterday I watched Bakie ride from Shannon’s house down to the ice-covered bay. The attacker must have come from the woods so that he wouldn’t be spotted out on the white ice from a distance. I keep snapping photos until my fingers are stiff from the cold. Suddenly I hear Fred shout. I take the flashlight out from under the seat of my snowmobile and rush into the dark house. We’ll have much more light now.
He points to a corner.
“I believe that’s the murder weapon.”
I crouch down and stare at a stained metal blade.
“What is it?”
“A Viking knife. There are more tools hanging on the wall.”
“Then the attack wasn’t planned very well,” I think aloud. “If the killer took the knife from here.”
“Or he knew what he’d find inside.”
I put on latex gloves. Closs will be pleased when he learns that we probably have the murder weapon. One of the murder weapons. We go searching for an object the perp could have used to hit Bakie on the head but don’t find anything that looks suspicious. We find a small flashlight instead that neither of us owns.
We hear Ski-Doos on the bay. Closs appears with two paramedics, who attend to Bakie right away. It takes no time for them to confirm he’s dead. Closs orders Fred and me to secure any evidence before the body is taken away. I show him my cell phone photos of the tracks in the snow.
His face brightens for a second. “Well done, Gates.”
The compliment makes me happier than I’d like to admit.
“Fred van Heisen discovered the possible murder weapon,” I tell him.
Closs scrutinizes the Viking knife Fred hands him. The dark spots on the blade look like dried blood. Closs turns to Fred.
“What are your conclusions?”
“Bakie arranged to meet somebody he knew here; they argued and the dispute ended violently. Or somebody waited for him here and then killed him from behind.”
“Have you got any thoughts on this, Gates?”
I ignore his phrasing.
“I share Fred’s assessment that the assailant waited for Bakie and then attacked him from behind. I can’t find any scratches or wounds that indicate Bakie was able to defend himself. We also didn’t find any signs of a struggle.”
Fred says nothing, so I continue.
“Maybe the attacker lay in wait for Bakie in here. Bakie opened the door and was knocked to the ground with an object before he knew what was happening to him. He falls on his face, and the perp stabs him in the back.”
I hesitate again, hoping Fred will pick up where I’m leaving off.
Now he bites.
“Just three badly placed stab wounds in the back—that’s odd.”
I nod.
“Really strange. I suspect that none of the knife wounds were fatal. None are near the lungs or the heart or close to the liver and the kidneys. As if the perp suddenly aborted his attack.”
“Aborted?” Closs frowns. “The man’s dead.”
“Because he was lying in here all night at five bel
ow. His head wound is the worst of his injuries, in my view.”
She’ll never recover from those blows. Her head is half bashed in.
I’m cold, and it’s not even nighttime yet. I pull down my thin headgear to cover just half my face. I must look like a criminal in this ski mask.
Closs puts his hat back on as well.
“Maybe the murderer was interrupted?”
“Out here?” Fred is skeptical.
“The tracks point to only two snowmobiles,” I concur. “Except for ours.”
“We really must first search the surrounding area properly in order to know that,” Closs lectures me. “Tell me once again why you two came here.”
I explain everything to him obediently, mentioning Bakie’s remark about the Brown Man in front of Shannon Wilkey’s house. And that I spotted his Ski-Doo at the Viking house today and wanted to ask him why he lied to me about the whoodle when it actually belonged to him.
The roar of motors mingles with my words. We step out of the house. The two paramedics are waiting to put the body on a sled. Sullivan and Delgado get off their snowmobiles.
“If Bakie thought he was meeting Shannon Wilkey here, then we’ll just have to go listen to what she has to say.” Closs directs this to me and Fred. “What are you waiting for?”
“We’re not finished securing the evidence,” Fred responds.
“These two can take over.”
I think of something else.
“Shouldn’t we first notify Bakie’s next of kin?”
Closs reacts impatiently.
“You guys get going. Just tell Shannon about the dog’s head; leave out the murder for now, if you can steer clear of it.”
An order. I’m pissed off. Why is he shooing us away from the crime scene when it was Fred and I who discovered the dead man? We’re important witnesses. He could have had us secure the evidence and sent the other team away. He knows my reputation. But maybe it’s worthless now.
Fred reveals nothing. We’re already way out on the ice when we hear the Cessna.
18
When Rick hears the hum of the motor, he lowers his chainsaw and searches the sky.
“What’s that doing here?” his brother asks as he stacks the sawed-off branches in the crate on top of his homemade sled.
CRIES FROM THE COLD: A bone-chilling mystery thriller. (Detective Calista Gates 1) Page 11