A little after eleven, Shelter spotted Gordy Taylor and his wife among the members of the congregation exiting the church. Many of the men were dressed in short-sleeve summer shirts, but the chief of police was old-school. He had on a navy-blue suit and tie over a white shirt. His wife was decked out in a sky-blue sleeveless silk dress and a formal sun hat with a broad white brim and a broach set in the side. Taylor was a bull of a man, over six feet with broad shoulders, a thick neck and a barrel chest, despite being in his sixties. He wore big old-fashioned rectangular eyeglasses that touched his cheeks, and his bald head only had a few wisps of grey brushed over the top. He met Shelter’s eyes and nodded as he descended the stairs to the sidewalk, his wife holding his arm.
“Good morning, Mike,” Taylor said, extending his hand.
Janet Taylor nodded and smiled but remained silent as Shelter shook her hand. They had a cordial relationship, but Shelter’s family had been closer to Taylor’s first wife. Shelter’s mother was close friends with her and reacted with fury to the news that Taylor was leaving her for a younger woman. “He’s a nasty one. She’ll find that out before long and be sorry she met him.” Shelter had been surprised by the vehemence of the comment. Taylor could be curt, but he’d never seen a cruel side to his personality. Shelter put his mother’s reaction down to anger for her friend, who now faced starting her life over after a divorce.
“Would you excuse us, dear?” Taylor said. “I want a word with Michael.”
Shelter and Taylor watched as she strolled a little way down the block into the shade of a giant elm tree. She took a cellphone from her miniature purse, pushed a button and nestled it to her ear. Taylor turned to Shelter. “We have a luncheon.” Then, after a moment, “You heard what happened last night?”
“Yes.”
“You going to this protest downtown?”
Shelter nodded.
“Good.” Taylor was toying with his car key. When he looked up, Shelter felt his chest constrict at the intensity of his gaze.
“Where are we with these Indian girls?”
“We have a few leads but nothing solid,” Shelter replied. He wasn’t surprised to hear the chief refer to the victims as “Indians.” The word was now widely considered a slur, and the police chief would be roasted if he used it in public. But Shelter had heard him use it many times and chalked it up to his age. Many years before, Shelter had resisted dropping the word from his own vocabulary. He’d been put off by words like First Nation and Aboriginal as sops to political correctness. But he’d come to see the racist overtones of the word, its association with a dark, shameful period of the country’s history. Now he regarded its use — except by the most out-of-touch in the older generation — as a put-down, a sign of disdain for the aspirations of Indigenous people. He doubted the chief would ever come to the same realization.
“What leads?” Taylor asked.
“We’re looking at the boyfriend and another guy, a rapper with a pretty long sheet. He hangs out at the same bar as Crystal Rempel. Her sister works there too.”
“Name?”
“Rory Sinclair.”
Taylor nodded. A drop of sweat ran from his temple to his jowl before he flicked it away. “The same guy did both, yeah?”
“It looks that way, although we’ve got some significant forensic inconsistencies.”
“How about the boyfriend?”
“Ex-boyfriend. Moses Kent. He’s a possibility, but I can’t see a link with Monica Spence. I think we should focus on Sinclair for now.”
Taylor grunted in disgust. “The Indian groups and the media are screaming. The mayor’s panicking.” He glared at Shelter for a long moment before his expression softened. “Listen,” he said. “I know you’re working your tail off on this. Keep at it, step by step, like we’ve always talked about. I wouldn’t want anyone else on it but you.”
Taylor was retiring at the end of the month, and Shelter suspected he was worried about the killings putting a stain on a forty-year career. He felt a deep need not to let him down.
Taylor put a hand on his shoulder and spoke in a low, confidential voice.
“We were thinking of you. It’s coming up to a year since you lost Christa. I want you and Kelsey to come over to the house for dinner soon, yeah?”
“Just let me know when, and we’ll be there.”
Taylor nodded and turned to join his wife. They got into his black Chrysler 300 and drove away.
EIGHT
Shelter could feel the sun burning through his shirt, and his back, neck and scalp were wet with sweat. Lifting his sunglasses, he brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes. In the distance, a line of marchers shimmered in the heat haze coming off the cement. A large hand-painted banner carried by the lead marchers read Justice for Crystal, Monica and Jason — the man who’d been shot the night before.
Packed solid in the four southbound lanes of Main Street, the marchers were led by a line of women who Shelter assumed were family and friends of the two murdered women and Jason Courchene. In the lead group were also several leaders in tribal headdress, carrying long staffs adorned with feathers. The breeze brought the sound of drums and rhythmic chanting from traditional singers. Shelter spotted Nicki among the lead group. She wore a New York Yankees baseball cap, a plain black T-shirt and black jeans cut off at the knee.
Shelter lowered the binoculars and turned to Traverse. “Looks like hundreds of them.” The two officers stood on the roof of a low building with a good view of Main Street. With traffic stopped, the area in front of them had been transformed into a broad public square. Steel dividers were set up along sidewalks on both sides of the wide avenue. These were to corral the marchers and keep them away from city buildings on this side and the Concert Hall and the Pantages Theatre on the other. Dozens of uniformed constables were positioned around the site. A police helicopter buzzed overhead, and the media was out in force.
Finally, the march reached city hall, and the people quickly filled both sides of Main Street and grew steadily more tightly packed. The chiefs and other leaders, along with Nicki, Monica Spence’s mother, and members of Jason Courchene’s family, climbed the low steps in front of city hall and stood in a semi-circle. Shelter scanned the crowd. There was a mix of all ages and included many non-Indigenous people who’d come out to show their support. For such a large number, they were surprisingly quiet. Someone blew a whistle, another honked a vuvuzela and some teenage girls gave occasional whoops. But mostly there was a low rumble as the people talked and waited for something to happen.
A loud bang shook the street, followed by a gasp, screams and finally a sustained cheer washed across the crowd. Shelter recovered from a flinch and caught sight of a trail of smoke wafting over the crowd. He followed it into the sky. Someone had fired a flare, and it burned as a bright, fluorescent ember high above the marchers. The sun glinted off hundreds of pairs of sunglasses as every head tilted skyward to watch it burn and drift in the wind.
Shelter looked to his right and saw the sergeant in charge of the crowd control unit talking with his inspector. Shelter knew both of them — good men.
Moses Kent stepped forward from the semi-circle of leaders to a microphone stand. “Boozhoo! Miigwech! Welcome, and thank you for coming.” The crowd applauded and whistled. “We honour the memory of Crystal Rempel and Monica Spence.” The words boomed out from two large bullhorns that had been set up on the steps. “We pray for the full recovery of our brother, Jason Courchene. And we honour the families who have suffered so much.”
He swept his eyes from one side of the huge gathering to the other. “We are here today on Treaty One territory, yes, to talk about what happened to our sisters and brother, but also to talk about why it happened. Why Crystal, Monica, and twelve hundred other Indigenous women have been murdered or disappeared in this country. Why Jason Courchene, unarmed and alone, was gunned down on a dark street like others before him. They are not statistics. They are not numbers. They are our brother and sisters, our
children and grandchildren. They were loved and are loved.”
The crowd let out what to Shelter sounded like a collective sigh and pushed closer toward the stairs where Kent spoke. He dropped his voice. “It is a sad day. Monica and Crystal have been taken from their families, taken from all of us. Jason is fighting for his life. What message does it send? Is the message it’s okay to kill our young people? Well, we say it’s not okay!” The crowd applauded, and a circle of drummers at the side of the stairs banged out their approval.
“Our young people are precious. Every single person in this province, this country, has a responsibility to say we will not accept this any longer. We all have the responsibility to find justice for Monica, Crystal and Jason and all the other victims and their families.”
Kent raised his voice again, and it echoed off the buildings across Main Street. “Why do these situations happen over and over again? How many deaths will it take before there is change?” He paused. “We will not stop asking questions and demanding answers. We ask everyone to stand with us, not only to change the system to prevent what happened to Jason, but also bring justice for Monica and Crystal and closure for their families. Someone out there knows who killed those young women, and it’s their responsibility to step forward and tell what they know.” The crowd was solemn, and the applause in response to Kent’s words died away quickly. “Again, miigwech to you all for coming. Let this just be the beginning of a new day of action.”
Kent gave way at the microphone to a woman. As the new speaker began, Shelter scanned the march leaders for Nicki. To his surprise, he caught sight of her striding down the stairs and into the crowd. Shelter looked ahead of her to see where she was heading. For the first time, he spotted Rory Sinclair. He called to Traverse and pointed. “Nicki’s going after Sinclair.”
Sinclair was six or seven rows back from the front of the crowd, laughing with a friend. Nicki pushed her way through to him and gave him a hard shove in the chest. When Sinclair recovered from his surprise, he barked something at her. She didn’t back down. She was up in his face, yelling at him.
People in the immediate vicinity of the confrontation had turned to see what was going on. Nicki was jabbing a finger into Sinclair’s shoulder. He backed away, trying to move off. Nicki circled, blocking his way. He gave her a hard slap, sending her stumbling backward. She fell and landed hard on her side. People around them backed away in shock and began shouting at Sinclair.
Shelter looked to nearby cops. None had reacted to the slap, perhaps not wanting to wade into the tightly packed crowd. He raced down a set of stairs and through an emergency exit that led onto the sidewalk. By the time he reached Nicki, she’d regained her feet but was doubled over and had a hand on her cheek. A young woman had an arm around her and was whispering something in her ear. Sinclair was nowhere to be seen. Shelter placed a hand on Nicki’s shoulder. “You okay?”
She straightened up and gave a hard shrug. “Get the fuck off me, man,” she shouted.
Shelter stepped back, and Nicki glared at him. He became aware of the curious onlookers in a circle around them. Together, Nicki and her friend moved away as the people in front of them opened a path to let them get to the edge of the crowd. Shelter returned to stand beside Traverse but kept his eye on Nicki as she first spoke to the woman and then eventually rejoined the leaders of the march.
When the speeches were over and the crowd began to break up, Shelter snaked through the dispersing people until he reached Nicki, who was chatting with a group of women.
He got her attention and signalled to her. “I need to talk to you,” he said when she’d detached herself from the circle of friends.
“So talk.”
“Not here. Come for a coffee.”
She glanced back at her friends, who were watching their conversation with undisguised curiosity. “I’m with my friends.”
“It’s important. It won’t take long.”
Nicki followed a half step behind Shelter the two blocks to the Peking Garden. As he held the door open for her, Shelter was hit by a blast of cold air, and once inside he felt dizzy in the gloom of the restaurant. He pointed Nicki toward a booth and went to the men’s room, where he doused his face with handfuls of cold water. After drying his face, he raked his hair with his fingers, tucked in his shirt, and hitched up his pants.
Nicki was waiting for him, her sunglasses over her eyes. The Peking Garden had been a popular spot back in the sixties and seventies, with its Art Deco dining room and waiters in jade-coloured tunics. But the decor, uniforms and menu hadn’t changed in fifty years, and the restaurant was dying a protracted death. Arthur Yee approached the table and laid a starched white tablecloth over yellow Formica. There were two other parties eating lunch at tables around the dining room, but Shelter’s was the only one with a tablecloth.
Back in the seventies, Yee had given up his waiter job at the Garden to open a little restaurant on Main Street near the train station. Shelter’s father had championed the restaurant, taking his insurance cronies there for lunches and his mother for dinners with other couples. His father had even found an entry-level underwriting job for Yee’s eldest son, who was now a vice president with the Royal Bank in Toronto. The restaurant had failed after a couple of years, and Arthur was forced back into the green jacket of a Peking Garden waiter, but he’d never forgotten the support he’d received from Shelter’s father over the years.
Nicki and Shelter sat in silence as Arthur laid down glasses of water and a stainless-steel teapot with jasmine brewing.
“What you want to eat?”
“I’m good with water for now,” Shelter said. “Nicki?”
Nicki shook her head. “I’m taking off.”
Yee retreated, and Shelter studied Nicki. “You okay?”
She scanned the room slowly rather than meet his gaze.
“That was a helluva scene back there,” he said. “It was good to hear Moses ask for people to come forward with information about Monica and Crystal.”
“You guys need all the help you can get.”
Shelter picked up his ice water and drained the glass, the cubes clinking against his teeth. He put the glass down with a bang.
Nicki jumped.
“All of this is a distraction, as far as I’m concerned. The longer it takes to find who killed Crystal, the worse our chances get. That’s just statistics.”
“I’m not a kid, so don’t talk to me like one.”
“There’s someone out there hoping, praying, believing a little more every day he’s getting away with it.”
Nicki bowed her head and toyed with a thick bracelet on her left arm, just one of the pieces of silver she was wearing — rings, bangles and a chain peeking out from her T-shirt. Shelter observed her: straight black hair, thick eyebrows and full lips. He detected light eye make-up and noticed her black T-shirt was new and fitted perfectly in the shoulders. The sleeves were rolled once, showing strong arms. He found himself wondering whether she was involved with someone before quickly pushing the thought from his mind, alarmed by the attraction he felt in that moment.
Quietly, he said, “It’s a beautiful bracelet.”
She let go of it and looked him in the eyes. “It’s Mike, right? What do you want from me, Mike?”
Shelter was surprised she’d remembered his name. “It seems like you know Rory Sinclair after all.”
“Of course I know him. Everyone knows him.”
“So why lie the other night? You said all you knew about him was he’s a crappy tipper.”
Nicki gave a shrug and a quick frown. “Rory’s not the kind of guy you run around talking to the cops about.”
“Okay. Let’s go back to the beginning. How do you know him?”
“We were in high school together. He’s a year older than me.”
“And Crystal?”
“She met him through me. When she first came in from the country, she was going to university and hanging out with her white friends. Then she st
arted seeing Moses.”
“What about Crystal and you?”
Again, their eyes met. Now it was Nicki who was studying his face. Shelter sensed she was making a judgment about whether she could trust him. She let her eyes slide to the right.
“It’s complicated, you know? We were sisters, but we didn’t know each other. Something inside her wanted to connect back to who she was, who we are. She started to go and see my mom, trying to help her get straight and such. Good luck with that, eh?” She began playing with her bracelet again. “She would come see me at the bar, and that’s when she met Rory.”
“So, she was into the night life?”
“She’d have a drink, but her work was her passion, and reconnecting to our culture and spirituality, especially after she started going to see our grandmother on the rez.”
“But she was hanging out with Rory at the bar?”
“No. She couldn’t stand him,” she said, shaking her head. “He tried coming on to her. But she just laughed it off. Little Big Man — that’s what she called him. He hated that.” Nicki took a sip of water.
“You went after Rory pretty good today. What’s that about?”
She started playing with chopsticks on the table. He waited. Finally, she said in a low voice, “He had a big fight with Crystal.”
Shelter frowned in surprise. “When?”
“The week before...”
“She was killed. What kind of a fight?”
“It started in the bar — them arguing. She had a finger in his face and was yelling at him.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. I was working the far section, but I could see Crystal was really pissed off. By the time I got over there, she’d left.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this the first time we talked to you?”
Nicki met his look. “I was in shock. I didn’t remember it until yesterday morning.”
Shelter considered this. He thought it was more likely that in her world you don’t help the police. You take care of your own problems.
Omand's Creek: A gripping crime thriller packed with mystery and suspense Page 6