Meeka holds Dulcie tight. I can’t see the two foster boys anywhere. At that point, a scream sounds through the arena. It’s so frightening that Dulcie begins to cry.
I rush to the auditorium. One of the biathletes is by the entrance, screaming hysterically. People are already trying to help her, but I push them aside and grab her firmly by the shoulders.
“What’s happened?”
Her screams turn into gasps. “He . . . he’s lying on the ground,” she manages to get out. “He’s bleeding.”
“Who?” Fred asks as he emerges at my side.
“Where?” I ask.
“He’s not moving.”
The young woman’s in shock, that’s obvious.
“A doctor, is there a doctor here?” somebody in the crowd shouts.
“We’ve got to secure the scene,” I say to Fred.
“Where?” I ask the girl again.
Her answer comes out like a groan: “Behind . . . behind the hot-dog stand. He’s . . . covered in blood.”
Some people move off instantly.
“Back off!” Fred’s voice sounds amazingly authoritarian. “Everybody back off!”
Closs heaves into view.
“An injured man, blood, behind the hot-dog stand,” I tell him hurriedly. Closs wants to leave immediately, but I push the athlete in his way.
“She’s our witness—and your responsibility. And we need an ambulance.”
Those words are going to cost me, but at that moment I couldn’t care less. I want to secure the scene of the crime before it’s ruined.
The hot-dog stand is about a hundred meters away. In the snow, I cannot advance as quickly as I’d like, although the ground around the arena is strewn with gravel. But Fred strides ahead as if he were on skates. He repeatedly shouts to the people following us: “Stay out of the way!”
Many are too curious and ignore him until Fred threatens: “I’ll throw you in the lockup if you keep following us!”
We reach the stand, out of breath. The sales window is closed. Nothing to see in front of the stand. We go around to the back with flashlights, avoiding the footprints leading behind it. No tracks will be trampled down this time.
A man’s lying in blood-soaked snow. His dark cap’s almost fallen off his head. Hair cut short, military style. We carefully turn the body over to see if he’s still alive. The left side of his face is covered in blood. A bullet hole is next to his eye.
Dr. Perrell.
Good God. My doctor. A lot of people’s doctor.
No time to get emotional.
“A shot to the temple,” I observe.
Fred feels the carotid artery for a pulse.
“Nothing, but he’s still warm.”
He steps aside so I can check his findings. No pulse. None.
It’s clear that Dr. Perrell is dead.
I send a silent supplication for him into the universe and take some pictures with my phone.
“Could it be suicide?”
Fred looks at me, but I feel it rather than see it. His flashlight beam is trained on the body on the ground.
“Not if he’s right-handed. I don’t see any gun.”
We follow routine and go through all our options. Who could get close enough to Perrell to shoot the doctor in the temple?
“I saw him fifteen minutes ago,” Fred says. “He was talking to Shannon Wilkey. Both looked angry.”
“We’ve got to talk to Shannon. What was Perrell doing behind the hot-dog stand?”
I put on my latex gloves and search Perrell’s jacket pockets. I undo the zipper. I find his phone and wallet a few seconds later. Fred shines his light on them. We hear the ambulance siren. The sarge did move fast. I put the wallet and cell phone into evidence bags.
Frantic shouts close by. Sullivan’s voice. But it’s Closs who comes around the corner. He shudders when he recognizes the doctor. Maybe it was just my imagination; he might simply have slipped on the snow trying to avoid the footprints, as we did.
“Jesus Christ!”
Fred fills him in quickly.
“This time we have a bullett. It’s still in the body.”
So there is a chance we’ll identify the gun.
“Let’s get floodlights here,” Closs orders.
We need to illuminate the crime scene. I thank the universe that Port Brendan has the appropriate lights.
Sullivan appears with the camera. We make way for him. The sight of the dead man takes his breath away. For once we’re spared his sarcasm. A series of flashes brightens the grisly scene. Then he sprays blue paint in the snow to outline the body.
The paramedics arrive at the scene. Closs signals them to remove the body. One of them swears, shocked when he recognizes the dead man. Dr. Triona Cameron will have to officially determine the cause of her fellow doctor’s death. There are still onlookers standing a good distance away because Closs has blocked off the area with yellow-and-black tape. Although the populace of Port Brendan doesn’t yet know who the dead person is, we won’t be able to hush it up for long. Closs has probably directed our witness not to say anything for the time being. Three murders. If that won’t jolt the place like an earthquake.
“What’s Delgado doing?” Fred asks.
Closs answers: “He’s getting everybody to go back home.”
“And our witness?” I can’t hold back the question, although it will annoy him.
He reacts objectively. “My wife’s taking care of her until we can interrogate her.”
“We also have to question Shannon Wilkey; she was talking with Perrell fifteen minutes beforehand. And Ann Smith.”
“Why her?”
“She pointed a rifle at Perrell during the shooting competition.”
Closs frowns. “Probably in fun.”
“Then, it wasn’t much fun. And it was illegal as well.”
A second’s pause before Closs hands out our assignments.
“First the crime scene. Gates and Fred, keep working here. Sullivan, you take care of the photos. And please get the lights out here. I’ll talk to our men in Happy Valley-Goose Bay and organize transportation. The medical examiner will be amazed to see something coming from us again so soon.”
I’m pleasantly surprised. Sarge is giving Fred and me the crime scene. He assigned it to Sullivan and Delgado at the Viking house. What changed his mind? I can’t see Sullivan’s reaction in the dark; he stomps away without a word. His silence speaks volumes. Closs leaves as well.
Fred squats on the ground. We examine the footprints with our flashlights. The athlete’s shoes are easily recognizable. It’s harder with the other tracks.
“Same perp as in the Viking house?” I raise the question.
“Could be the same size. But which are the perp’s and which are Dr. Perrell’s?”
We’ll have to compare the photographs. It didn’t escape me that Perrell wasn’t wearing his glasses. I can’t see them anywhere in the snow. Maybe they were just reading glasses.
“Again, there’s no sign of a struggle,” I observe and repeat the question: “What was he doing behind the hot-dog stand?”
“The stand is closed, although there are several hundred people in the arena. The owner would have done a terrific business.”
“It was open before the opening ceremony started. The operator surely wanted to be in there in the arena.”
“Maybe the doctor had to relieve himself fast, and the perp followed him.”
“But there are toilets in the arena.” I make a stab at a different interpretation. “Let’s suppose that Perrell was looking for Dulcie. He looks behind this stand. Somebody follows him, pretending to want to search along with him. The killer has a good flashlight, and Perrell does not.”
Fred bites. “A SureFire R1 Lawman?”
Now we’re speaking the same language.
“But he doesn’t hit his victim with the flashlight. He shoots him.”
“And he shoots at close range. A shot to the head is more difficult t
han to the heart.”
“Not necessarily, if there’s a lot of thick clothing on the body. Perrell only wore a thin cap.”
The right side of my body starts to hurt. I don’t know what kicked it off. Maybe the cold. We’re barely moving, which doesn’t improve the situation. I shift from one foot to the other.
Fred’s eagle eye spots my behavior. “We need a hot drink to keep warm. I’ll send Sullivan a text.”
Suddenly, a light dawns.
“We didn’t hear the shot because of the fireworks,” I tell him.
“Why did they go off so early anyway? The program said they were supposed to happen much later.”
I pull my hood over my cap.
“At nine o’clock. I can only explain it this way: whoever set off the fireworks saw the people pouring out of the arena and thought the ceremony was over.”
There’s a loud shout for Fred. He runs back to the street. I hear him talking.
“The local rag,” he explains when he returns. “Closs is going to have to fight that one. It’s going to be all over the country.”
It begins to snow. Just small flakes, fortunately. There’s hardly any wind. I’m grateful for such things in Labrador.
“Was Perrell well-known across the country?” I ask.
“Not that I know of. But when a doctor is killed . . . Doctors are there to save lives, not to lose their own. You can be sure somebody will draw a parallel with Dr. Grenfell.”
Dr. Grenfell. I remember. The British doctor who cared for people here, who had hospitals built in Battle Harbor and St. Anthony, who sailed along the dangerous Labrador coast and took on sick, starving families who otherwise got no medical attention. A hero; a benefactor; a superman.
“At least we can exclude Gerald Hynes and Dennis Richards as murderers in this case,” Fred remarks.
His words snap me back to the present with laser-like speed. I’d been able to suppress for several hours what had unfolded in the hospital room. A knot forms in my stomach.
Sullivan saves me. He strides toward us with two large thermoses.
“Tea’s in one, coffee in the other. I put sugar in both.”
He doesn’t even say it sardonically. What’s got into him anyway? Or into Closs? They’re both so polite. So assiduous. I choose the tea because I know Fred’s totally into coffee. The tea is strong and sweet; I drink it down as if I’m dying of thirst.
We install the floodlights Sullivan brought. The dark bloodstains light up against the white background. We search the surroundings nearby. In a few minutes we stumble across a ballpoint pen with the letters Eagle USA HB2 on the barrel. But the major discovery comes after half an hour. We overlooked it at first because it’s white. A pocketknife with a white casing. You don’t see that very often. On it are the words Vote for Pleaman Hick.
“Who’s Pleaman Hick?” I ask.
“An opposition candidate in the last provincial election. An independent.” Sullivan gives a low whistle. “Luck seems to be on our side.”
I look at him, puzzled.
“Pleaman lost,” Sullivan explains, “and everybody said it was because of the white pocketknife. Right, Fred?”
I don’t get it.
He tries a second time. “People here think white pocketknives mean bad luck.”
“Nice try, my good man, but I don’t see why that’s funny.”
“Trust me, Gates. People here are superstitious, and poor Hick didn’t get that until it was too late.”
Fred clears his throat.
“Sullivan’s right. Fishermen in particular think that way. There was even something about white pocketknives on TV. Nobody wanted one because they’re supposed to be unlucky. Because the casing’s white.”
I stare at them.
“And why the heck is that supposed to bring bad luck?”
Fred shrugs.
“Simply superstition. Why do people think the number thirteen’s unlucky? Just as stupid.”
I want to put my freezing hands into my jacket pockets, but they’re full of evidence bags. I transfer the bags to the box Sullivan brought.
An unlucky white pocketknife. Not one person in Vancouver will believe me.
41
He watches Calista Gates; she’s talking almost affectionately to the young athlete who discovered Dr. Perrell. It’s good to have a woman on the team in situations like this. Men instill fear in some people, who are much more open with a policewoman. Bernard Closs found that this held especially for women and children. But Gates’s gentle persuasion doesn’t allay his suspicions. Last night he learned that she can be cold and hard as pack ice. She appeared to be impersonal at the station when she filled in her teammates on the results from the crime scene and their finds. No—he corrects himself—not quite impersonal. He sensed a repressed rage in her when she used the word murderer and not perp. And later she even used the word hangman. He had to order Gates afterward to get a few hours’ sleep. He can’t afford to have her brain turn to mush because of lack of sleep. He needs her. They’re thinking at RCMP headquarters about sending a team of specialists from Corner Brook to Port Brendan and turning over the investigation to them. But what would those people know about life in Port Brendan? He knows the place like the back of his hand. Corner Brook is in Newfoundland, not even in Labrador. It would then appear that, once again, he and his team don’t have the ability to bring an investigation to a successful conclusion. So much for his dream of a leadership position in a large city. In a metropolis, where he could live anonymously.
He was able to convince headquarters that morning to give him three more days. That’s how long the special unit would need in any case to get to Port Brendan in winter and find their way around the place. He persuaded his superiors with a claim that passed his lips only because of the pressure he was under: “We have Calista Gates from Vancouver here, and she’s already made great progress. She’s produced a very clear profile of the perp.”
With that he was able to come away with seventy-two hours. Now Gates mustn’t let him down.
The biathlete gradually responds to Gates’s reassuring efforts. His wife had given her a sedative the previous evening, but the effect seems to be wearing off. They’re in the guest room in the basement of Gates’s house; the other two women are waiting upstairs in the living room. He didn’t want to take the three of them to the police station.
Gates asks the woman: “May we ask you a few questions?”
She nods. Her name is Karissa Pardy.
“Can you tell me why you were behind the hot-dog stand yesterday evening? And why your friends weren’t with you?”
“I had to pass something on to Dr. Perrell.”
Karissa points to a package in the corner wrapped in brown paper.
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know. My uncle gave it to me.”
“Why didn’t you give it to Dr. Perrell in the arena?”
“Dr. Perrell said he wanted to meet me behind the hot-dog stand.”
“Don’t you think that’s a . . . somewhat unusual meeting place?”
Karissa lowers her eyes and doesn’t say anything.
She has an idea of what’s in the package, Bernard thinks. Something Perrell doesn’t want to be seen with in public.
He puts latex gloves on, picks up the package, and carefully opens the paper. A flat box appears. He turns his back to Karissa and opens it. When he sees its contents, he jerks backward. A chain of claws, polar bear claws.
“Take a look at this, Gates.”
She stands up and looks over his shoulder.
“Aha,” is her sole comment.
She reacts like a pro, he thinks, closing the box back up.
“We have to take your package with us,” she explains to Karissa.
“Was Dr. Perrell killed because of the package?” the athlete asks.
“No. What happened to him has nothing to do with you.” Gates’s voice is amazingly clear.
He looks at her, perplexe
d. He doesn’t share her point of view, at least not at that moment. That’s something they’ll have to discuss in the office.
“Will the games still go on?” Karissa looks at Gates full of hope. She lives for her sport.
Bernard is familiar with this attitude from his son, who’s a hockey player. He weighs in. “No, it’s not a good idea under the circumstances.”
Karissa starts to cry, and Gates puts an arm around her.
He looks out the window. A storm’s coming up. Sheila’s Brush. The last big snowstorm until spring. The games would have had a rough time of it even without any murders. In a storm like this, you can’t see a target or even a cross-country ski track. But that’s no consolation for Karissa Pardy. She rushes to her friends in the living room. Gates waits until they are alone, then goes to the open closet where the athletes’ jackets are hanging.
“Look here.”
She points to a place on the wall inside the closet.
He comes closer. His eyes need some time before he recognizes anything. A stamp. The Viking symbol with the interlocking triangles. A board like the one used for the crate Lorna Taylor’s skeleton was found in.
Gates’s cheeks are lightly flushed. “Scott Dyson helped with the renovations on this house; that’s what Grace Butt told me.”
“Scott was in the slammer when Lorna disappeared.”
“But he’s sure to know who gave him the board.” A note of triumph sounds in her voice.
Later, when she’s sitting beside him in the police car, she asks: “Are polar bear claws legally traded?”
“The law only permits Inuit to do it.”
“Maybe Karissa’s uncle is an Inuit. No reason for Perrell to hide behind a hot-dog stand.”
“No. Heaven only knows why a man of forty-two wants to meet a teenager secretly in the dark,” he replies and steps on the gas.
“We need to find out why Dr. Perrell left the UK. He told me he felt trapped in the hospital system. Maybe there are other reasons.”
“What are you getting at, Gates? Seducing minors? Be careful with things like that. The doctor is virtually a saint in this place.”
“What if the murderer was one of the athletes? Or a spectator? They’ll all take off, now that the games are over, and we won’t have quick access to them anymore.”
CRIES FROM THE COLD: A bone-chilling mystery thriller. (Detective Calista Gates 1) Page 27