by P W Ross
Jack looked into the floor of the stern and smiled as he stepped in to start the engine. Not a drop of water. He primed the engine once, engaged the choke and with a single pull on the cord, the Evinrude fired up and purred steadily. Making his way to the wheel, he flipped the bumpers in and he backed out of the slip. As he swung around and headed for town, Duff got comfortable on an old sleeping blanket spread on the floorboards. The trip would take half an hour. Jack was in no hurry. Slow was good.
Heading for town and struggling to take his mind off the bodies, Jack could not shake the image of their haunting eyes. The back support for the front bench had been removed and he straddled it sideways with his left hand on the wheel, right elbow on his knee and chin in hand. Two boats passed him heading south and he gave them the perfunctory wave, the open hand brought from behind the ear and forward forty-five degrees in a slow chopping motion, just once. Everybody waved on this lake. Actually, everyone but the native community; most, but not all, were non-wavers. Some still considered anyone else on the lake other than a native to be an interloper and made a point of never getting over it. There remains more than a little truth in the supposition.
Rather than moor at the town pier, Jack puttered to the OPP dock and secured behind the launch.
“Duff, stay and mind the boat.”
With that, the resentful dog lay back down while Jack started up the hill and across Canoe Company Road, forcing a spring in his step, determined to shake off this funk. Shit happens, right?
The tired frame building with a long deep porch and spindly columns could have easily doubled for a western jail in an old duster. Ramshackle, it had two cells out back while the second floor had a kitchen and two bedrooms that the officers often used as sleeping quarters. Must have been a treat trying to get some shuteye with a couple of drunks in the tank. The administrative office was upfront. The latest in computer technology seemed out of place in an office of dark, stained wood desks, walls with three foot high wainscoting and lit by immense suspended globes. The aroma was a blend of old varnish and tainted wood polish. The only thing missing were the WANTED posters. The Wild Bunch wouldn't have had much trouble busting out of here.
Chapter Five
As Jack bellied up to the counter, Avril, the adorable but not-too-bright young receptionist recognised him, and blurted out. “You sure missed all the excitement this morning Mr. Alexander!”
“Really?”
Eyes brimming with excitement, she was busting a gut to tell him. “The boss brought in two bodies from down the lake and he... well, he just plopped them right down on the town dock. They were in a cage or something... really creepy.”
“I bet”, Jack nodded solemnly. “Sorry I missed it... must have been quite a sight.”
Obviously, she was unaware of his role in the proceedings and he saw no good reason to spend the time filling her in. Like the rest of the town, she would find out soon enough.
“Is the Inspector here?”
“Oh no, he's up at the Food Co-op with everyone else.”
“At the where?”
“The old IGA!”
“Who's everyone else and what the hell are they doing up at the grocery store?”
“Well, the coroner from North Bay came up with a detective and he called ahead to tell Jill to keep the bodies cool, so she and the Inspector took them up to the Co-op and put them in the meat locker.”
“Enterprising”
“Yeah, but kinda spooky don’t you think? I mean uber-spooky.”
Jack studied her pierced nose and pink spiky hair.
“So, what's the deal? What section do you think they're in? Got them hanging up with the sides of beef?”
“Gee, I don't know. They wouldn't do that would they?”
He turned and started out then rolled his eyes as she called after him.
“Are they expecting you?”
“Sort of.”
He continued down the front stairs to make his way through the village and the newly designated town morgue.
It was a ten-minute walk, but in no hurry, he stopped for take-out coffee from Lawrence Wong at the Shanghai Gardens. It seemed as if the second restaurant to be established in every Northern Ontario town after the greasy spoon diner was Chinese, and Larry's was no different. The food was good, the place was clean and it was on the radar of every trucker travelling the Trans Canada.
Larry wasn't around but his wife Therese poured his large regular and of course couldn't help but ask him if he'd heard the news. Word was getting around.
A small crowd was milling about restlessly in front of the Co-op where rookie officer Jill Parsons held the fort. Half had come to ogle and the other half waited to finish their shopping. The Co-op had once been an IGA supermarket but the chain had pulled out when the mine closed, so the townsfolk formed a co-operative to save it. Despite tough economic times, it was surviving now that the locals shopped there regularly. Use it or lose it. Walmart wasn't coming.
Jill saw Jack and waved him through. “They're all the way at the back in the meat locker,” she whispered conspiratorially in his ear.
“So I understand. Very resourceful Jill,” he said wryly. “How's the butcher taking it?”
“He's not thrilled Jack. Look, it was either that or put them back in the lake like a bait bucket until the coroner arrived.”
The macabre injected with levity, perhaps that's what the horror of the situation demanded.
Jack walked reluctantly through the deserted store toward the meat locker, knowing exactly where it was from the many times during the fall hunting season the butcher had helped him dress his moose. He set his half-finished coffee down on a shelf beside the canned Irish stew and although it seemed an absolutely absurd thing to do, knocked on the door of the meat locker. The well-worn oak door was immense. It had a pockmarked steel handle.
“Abandon all hope ye who enter here!” a booming theatrical voice responded.
Against his better judgment, Jack entered.
A small cloud of misty condensation greeted him as he entered. It felt like a movie set, the special effects guy using dry ice to create the right mood. The ambient light was eerily low but a harsh spotlight shone into the cage, which now rested on a steel table moved in from the cutting room. Six men, the tops of their heads shrouded with vapour breath, encircled the table. Hanging sides of beef, pork, lamb and the odd wheel of cheese surrounded them. To say the sight was otherworldly was understatement.
Of the six circling the table he recognised four: Inspector Rummell, Bob, Mayor Virgil Rowan and Luke the butcher. Bob was haggard. He'd finally had enough and wanted to go home. Virgil Rowan was miserable.
He had been mayor for six months since retiring from the Department of Lands and Forests. Ran mainly as a favour to the townspeople. He knew the job was more trouble than it was worth. A situation like this was clearly beyond anything he was prepared to deal with. He had that ‘Why on my watch?’ look. Other than the fact it was his locker, Jack couldn’t really think of any reason for Luke to be there.
What the hell am I doing here with this cast of characters? Jack thought. Rummell stepped forward and introduced him to North Bay detective Rene Lavigne and the coroner, Conrad Brautigan. Lavigne had a demeanour of competence, appearing to pay attention but with the air of someone who wanted to be somewhere else. Who could blame him? Brautigan cut an eclectic figure. Long silver hair pulled back in a pony-tail and a full, well-trimmed beard framed a ruddy face centred by a slightly bulbous nose that had enjoyed many a snifter. He sported a dark, well-tailored suit with a centre vent, flapped pockets, and double-pleated pants were sported over a pair of polished black brogues. His crisp white button-down shirt was fronted by a burgundy paisley cravat. The only concession he made to his profession was the magnifying headgear and rubber gloves.
“You the one who snagged these two?” Brautigan queried Jack, who made the connection with the theatrical voice but in his enthralment with the bodies, missed the ques
tion.
“This is Jack Alexander,” interjected the mayor. “He and Bob brought them up.”
“When you pulled them up, were they lying on the bottom of the cage or floating at the top?” Brautigan queried.
Still spellbound by the bodies, the question by-passed Jack again.
“Mr. Alexander! Are you with us? I can write it out for you if you want.”
“Uh... yeah... sorry.” This guy could get under your skin. “What was the question?”
He ran his right hand absentmindedly through his hair.
“As you got them up and they came to the surface, were they lying on the bottom of the cage of floating at the top?”
“At the bottom.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. What difference does it make?”
“Time of death.”
“Time of death!” Jack winced. “How you going to figure that out with what you've got there?”
“Oh, I imagine I'll figure something out”.
Brautigan pulled off the surgical rubber gloves and stripped off the magnifier. His voice was authoritative but matter-of-fact.
“We're just about done here. Let's get these two in the ambulance and off to the Bay where I can suit up properly, get some tools going and do the autopsy.”
All in a day's work.
“Sorry I got here as the party was ending but do you mind if I ask a few questions?”
“Knock yourself out.”
“How is it that they look so, so... well, so good, after being in the water? shouldn't they be blue or black or yellow, or I dunno... just something different?”
“Mr. Alexander, they aren't in quite as good shape as you might think. Take a closer look at them now they’re out of the water and you’ll see that they are well macerated. It’s that sort of shrivelled look you get if you're in a tub or sauna too long, except theirs isn't going to go away. The tips of the fingers are getting hard to make out and are starting to fall apart. They've also been nibbled at while they were down. Much longer and the fish might have really had quite a go at them. They're rigid with rigor mortis, accentuated by the coldness of the water and that's the same reason that they're not blue or black. They were not floating in the cage because they haven't been down along enough and the gut bacteria didn’t have time to multiply and bloat them up. These folks were going to stay down for a while, that is, until you came along. My bet is they were alive when they went in and it wasn't much more that a couple of days ago.”
Jack regarded the coroner judiciously, developing a little more respect for the dandy.
“Brautigan, is this where I'm supposed to ask if there are any initial clues?” piped up the Inspector.
“Too early, Eugene, you're supposed to wait until I'm finished the autopsy. But sure, go ahead and fire away.”
“We've got no obvious trauma. They weren’t tied up and there’re no ligature marks. So, how do you get someone, in this case two healthy-looking specimens, to crawl into that cage without a whimper?”
Jack parrot-squinted at Bob and they locked eyes. Good question.
“That, my man, is the question of the day and right now I wouldn’t want to speculate. I’ll say this, it's the first thought that came to my mind as well.”
In fact, Brautigan had found something and wanted to share it now, regardless of how insignificant it seemed at this point. With professorial demeanour and the theatricality of his voice ratcheted down, he shared.
“The woman has two marks on her abdomen, horizontal, just below the navel. They're over an inch apart. They’ve swelled open a little and are slightly discoloured. Nothing remarkable really, except for the fact her partner has two similar sets of marks. One set close to horizontal on his left buttock and another set on the top of his left arm where it meets the shoulder. That set; however, is not horizontal but almost vertical.”
“Any idea what they are or what that might mean?”
“Not a clue,” Brautigan said, shrugging.
“Thanks for the insight.”
“My pleasure. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Really no need for the sarcasm Eugene. Not to worry, time will tell all.”
“Conrad,” Rummell sighed, head down and shaking slowly, “just get the goddamn autopsy done and give a call. Maybe you can tell me something I can't figure out for myself. Lavigne, you'll get a copy of my initial report as soon as I have everyone’s statement and we'll compare notes.” Rummell shoved his hands in his pockets and shivered as he ducked under a leg of lamb, angling his way toward the locker door.
“Let's get the hell out of here. I'm freezing my ass off.”
Chapter Six
Rummell led the grim parade between the canned goods, through the frozen food aisle, out the double front doors of the Co-op and into the sunlight. An ambulance, rear doors open, waited while the reluctant pallbearers, Bob, Luke, Lavigne and Rowan lugged the cage out on an old wooden shipping pallet. Brautigan had instructed the officers to wrap the cage in plastic shipping wrap and its translucent quality allowed the crowd to get an opaque look at what they had waited to see. As this odd funeral procession trudged sombrely to the ambulance, older women gasped the obligatory “Oh my God!” and the men simply looked at the cage and silently glanced at each other.
Taking stock of the town as he went, Jack retraced his steps toward the police station. Ten miles south, the sign read, Welcome to the Municipality of Temagami, Population 1000. Actually, there were only a couple of hundred people in town and that number included those in twenty surrounding townships. In the summer, seasonal residents pushed the number to two thousand. Eco-tourism was becoming more important to the community as southern tourists discovered not only the beauty, but the solitude of the lake. The regions' network of inter-connected lakes continued to be a prime destination for canoeists. Old timers still tried to stake mining claims, hoping to strike a silver or copper load, but the future for this town, if there were any, was in recreation.
One charter bank branch remained on the same site it had occupied for a century, regularly threatening to close. Across the road, the gift shop did a thriving trade in summer and closed for the winter. Rustic Robinson's hardware could provide just about everything you needed to maintain your house or cottage, and if they didn’t have it they would order it in. “we'll have it for in a couple of days... maybe.” The stone train station, built in 1909 to resemble a rural British station, had not seen heavy traffic since the big timber logging and copper mining days, but it was still operating and part of it had been restored as a museum. Freight still rumbled through but passengers and the Polar Bear Express were a thing of the past.
The most prominent edifice in town was the one hundred foot Temagami Fire Tower — a restored version of the original tower. The vertical ladder had been replaced by stairs. Tourists scaled and were rewarded with a forty-mile vista down the lake and over one of the last stands of old growth on the continent. In The White Bear Forest, many of the pine had stood for almost 400 years. Planted firmly on top of ‘Caribou Mountain’, the lookout stood five hundred feet above town. Close by was Ishpatina Ridge, the highest point of land in Ontario. In years past it had pinpointed fires in conjunction with a now derelict tower thirty-five miles down the lake as the crow flies. At night it was fully lit with strings of lights from top to bottom. The Eiffel Tower it was not, but from north or south, it could be seen for miles and was the trucker's beacon that dinner was at hand.
Lawrence’s Chinese restaurant, the Busy Bear Restaurant and Ice Cream Parlour bookended Bill's Bait and Tackle Shop that, upon entering, presented one with that distinctive ‘live minnow’ aroma issuing from its tanks, an oddly metallic smell thrown off by the galvanised aquariums. At the southern end of town Jack turned west at the gas station, where the Northeast arm of the lake touched the town docks and ventured along the lake road. Passing the Miniwassa, it took him ten minutes to slowly stroll through town. It took a vehicle less than a minute to make the same trip.
/> Meg shouted from the window of her chip wagon. “Jack, poutine?”
“Had my weekly ration yesterday,” he called back, “my arteries can't take more!”
He waved to Jack Stewart doing maintenance on one of the floatplanes at Obabika Airlines, and at the Temagami Canoe Company caught up with Ralph Jenson who was crafting him a 16-foot Prospector. Established in 1929 it was Canada’s second oldest canoe company and shipped canoes throughout North America and as far away as Scandinavia. If you wanted one, you had to stand in line. Building cedar and canvass canoes is a time-consuming labour of love and one that will not make the craftsman wealthy.
The original building, now the paddle and gift shop, still stood and its centrepiece remained the old boiler that had generated steam required to run the saws and to soften the ribs for bending. Out back, the canoes were built in a new Quonset hut and although the tools were modern, the process remained the same and could not be hurried. Jenson, the second owner, had apprenticed under the founder 'Wild' Bill Johnson almost thirty years ago.
Give or take, there appeared to be ten canoes on the go in various stages of progress (or lack thereof) and Ralph, hair and beard powdered with sawdust and a carpenters' apron around his waist, was hunched over one of them tacking in the outer cedar trips. Looking up to see Jack, he moaned, “Christ, you're the last guy I wanted to see today. Sorry, but I'm at least three weeks behind schedule and I'm not going to have yours ready for a month.”