A Death Most Cold

by Petryshyn, Jaroslav (Jerry)

  He made it to his destination unmolested — almost. Two students stopped him at the turnstile, making sundry inquiries about their essays and the upcoming midterm test (when would he hand them back, and what did they need to know?). Myron was succinct: the essays would be given back in due course, and they needed to know everything, thank you very much.

  It didn’t take Myron long to peruse the stories in both newspapers and confirm at least part of his suspicions. He made note of Merle Morgan’s name; that was the grounds maintenance worker who discovered the body. In a crucial way, Merle was the key to affirming Myron’s suspicions, although, of course, he didn’t know it. Fortunately, Myron had a passing but friendly acquaintance with Merle, which could facilitate an amicable chat.

  Coincidentally, Myron couldn’t help but notice his wife’s stories scattered throughout the pages of the Daily Reporter. She began her journalistic career as Nadia Tarasyn; that became hyphenated to Karpovich-Tarasyn, which in turn metamorphosed simply into Karpovich in the latest issues. Not an encouraging omen, he decided.

  Back in his office again, Myron quickly scanned the college’s directory tacked to the bulletin board above his desk. He dialled the Maintenance Department number. “Can I speak to Merle Morgan, please?”

  “Ah…hang on a minute,” said a very pleasant female voice. “Sorry,” she said when she came back on. “Merle’s off for a few days. Wanna leave a message?”

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll catch him later,” he said and rang off. He decided to phone Merle at home and arrange to meet him at Tim Horton’s the next day; he really needed the details of Merle’s memorable discovery of Dworking’s corpse.

  ***

  Aside from his phone call to Merle, before the day was out, Myron took care of one other piece of unpleasant business. He was not a confrontationist by nature or style, and he really hadn’t planned on any specific belligerency, but the opportunity presented itself when, walking down the hall, he noticed that Sidney’s door was ajar. Might as well strike while the iron’s hot.

  He walked in and helped himself to a seat.

  “Can’t win them all, eh, Sidney?”

  The Poly Sci instructor was sitting at his desk, his shirtsleeves rolled up, red pen in hand, also engaged in attacking student essays. Unlike his own, Sidney’s desk was very tidy, devoid of the usual academic debris that littered Myron’s workstation. Even his pink message slips were neatly stacked and impaled on a pointed spindle beside his telephone.

  Sidney laid his pen down and offered Myron a weak smile. “I tried.”

  “That you did,” Myron agreed. “And in about the only way you knew how.”

  Sidney’s face took on a quizzical expression, but he didn’t say anything.

  “For you it’s always been not how you play the game but that you win — hasn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” With a squeak, Sidney swivelled his chair toward Myron while pushing it out a little from his desk.

  “Look…I don’t particularly mind you playing your insidious charades with your colleagues — most can see through them, although I must admit getting suckered. Getting me to write you a letter of reference for a degree that came out of a Cracker Jack box was innovative, but using your students for personal aggrandizement — that’s really stooping low.”

  Sidney’s face darkened; Myron could tell he had scored a hit. “I don’t know what you are babbling about,” he said in a tense but controlled voice.

  “Sure you do. What inducements did you offer Mona? Never mind, I don’t really want to know. I just wanted to inform you that it was a slimy thing to do.”

  “I never offered any inducements, as you put it,” Sidney croaked. “I merely pointed out to Mona my candidacy — and she was free to exercise her rights as a board member.”

  “Sure she was.”

  “And I resent you marching in here and insinuating some impropriety on my part.” Sidney has definitely lost his accent, Myron noted.

  “Save your indignation for a more worthy cause. You fucked up royally on this one.”

  Sidney’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll file a grievance with the Faculty Association for character slander.”

  “I don’t think so. The ethical committee of the association wouldn’t take too kindly to your exploitation of your students. Your name is mud among the faculty already, and you wouldn’t want that to turn to total shit.”

  Sidney’s jaw dropped. Myron got up and without further ado walked out. There — he got him good where it hurt, not only in his enormous but delicate ego but also his Pavlovian need to be accepted and recognized by his peers. Sidney, of course, would remain Sidney, just like a leopard couldn’t change his spots. Of that Myron had no doubt, but this exercise was for Myron’s benefit. Dishing it out instead of taking it made him feel better.

  ***

  It was illogical, had no practical purpose, and was just plain stupid, but Myron did it anyway. After his confrontation with Sidney, he drove straight south along Main Street out of Great Plains until the road narrowed into a two-lane highway. Urbanization gave way to white fields on either side, with stunted shrubbery encased in ice and snow acting like scattered sentinels guarding the desolate landscape.

  About fifteen kilometres out, on the right-hand side, he spotted what he was looking for: the forlorn, winter-beaten sign read “Country Living Trailer Court,” beyond which a suburbia emerged, composed of about twenty-five mobile homes spaced in more or less an orderly fashion along a main road, augmented by a number of intruding side lanes.

  From the air, Myron imaged they looked like elongated shoeboxes with Dinky toy cars in between. He had been out here once before to visit a colleague who temporarily rented in this “blue-collar” district (as his colleague called it) because of the low vacancy rate in town.

  As Myron recalled, one entered a narrow hallway that opened into a modest kitchen, replete, he had noted, with 1950s décor, including one of those chrome-legged tables, complete with matching chairs that had yellow plastic materials on the seat cushions. The small Arborite countertop was some sort of faded beige/brown, like the cupboards and walls. The living room relieved the imposing claustrophobia by appearing slightly sunken, if not wider (at least in his mind). Farther down the hall, a few steps beyond the ubiquitous bathroom, one would find two undersized bedrooms.

  There wouldn’t be much variation, Myron thought, in these prefab homes. It was to one particular address and one particular nondescript bedroom Nadia found herself drawn. He slowly drove by Conrad Streuve’s undistinguished abode, located midway down on the main drag, his tires ominously crunching the crusty snow. An older Dodge pickup was in the laneway, and a feeble light penetrated through the kitchen window. No red Rabbit — nor would there be, he presumed, given their apparent falling out.

  He rolled a little beyond and parked, leaving the car idling. Now what? Go bang on the door? Confront him? Act outraged?

  Myron took out his Brigham and stuffed it with aromatic tobacco; he slowly lit it, producing a blue haze of smoke, the escape of which he quickly facilitated, rolling his window down a couple of inches. The pipe gurgled on his draw; he needed to change the cherry wood filter…

  He sat there puffing and debating, but it wasn’t a serious debate. The whole trip had been a cathartic exercise for himself and his spirit. Deep down, he knew that he had to let go — that’s just the way it was. Nadia had found her bed, satisfactory or not, and so be it. He was there simply as a confirmation of himself and his being. He felt more saddened than angry and experienced a sense of loss rather than anxiety or any urge to sudden action. He would, he realized, move on, or as Nadia would say, “plod on,” and eventually succeed. Still, here he was…

  Darkness had set in, and it was time to return to his apartment. Whatever obtuse logic literally drove him had passed, and he wearily called it a night.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Friday

  While endowed with a certain rugged beauty, Northern Alberta
was a harsh mistress. Dressed in boreal green, mostly spruce, aspen, pine, and birch, and dissected by a discontinuity of swamps, sloughs, rivers, creeks, and numerous lakes, the land was initially deemed inhospitable and unforgiving for settler activity except the early fur trade.

  However, within its scarred and gouged vastness lay a modest area of flattened plateaus, parkland, rolling hills, and inviting river valleys that belied its foreboding nature and beckoned adventurous homesteaders. Within these confines the soil proved deep and rich, on which heartier, short-season crops could be grown. Agriculture ensured settlement and rural stability, but it was what lay beneath — the gas and oil — that brought wealth and urbanity with all its attendant virtues and vices.

  Great Plains mirrored the region’s fortunes, emerging from being a quiet agricultural town replete with railways and grain elevators to an officially declared city by the late 1950s. With the economic booms (occasionally arrested by short-lived busts), Great Plains had become the administrative and distribution centre of the region. Still, it retained its stoic prairie grit and the “plain Jane” appearance of a typical Alberta town erected serendipitously, it seemed, in the middle of nowhere. The key was the grid pattern: two major streets, both inordinately wide and straight, intersecting to create the embryonic core. Main Street ran north–south; the significant other east–west.

  Myron was on the latter route, the one that began at the Edmonton turnoff a few kilometres to the east and ran like a plumb line past a string of motels, car dealerships, the quintessential mall, into Great Plains proper, continuing on until it dropped off literally into the river valley and provincial park where the road suddenly narrowed and turned twisty. The hinterland lay beyond.

  While the weather had turned relatively mild and the streets were clear, except for the odd patch of ice and snow, the traffic seemed congested and unusually slow. Is there a traffic light out or are they badly synchronized? Myron wondered. He had hit five red lights thus far, and there were only about nine on the whole street! He had arranged to meet Merle at 8:00 a.m., and at this rate he’d be late. He was now crawling through the nondescript four corners that marked Great Plains’ urban heart. On either side were square, squat, brick and clapboard edifices that even with modernized storefront facades could not escape their unadorned 1920s–30s architecture. The city centre still has a way to go in terms of attractiveness, Myron believed, a challenge, no doubt, for the Downtown Merchants Association.

  By the time Myron’s little green Audi turned into the Timmy’s parking lot, Myron’s thoughts had drifted from Great Plains’ core features (or lack thereof) to his own melancholy of estranged existence. The existential question, what am I doing here? was brought on in all likelihood by the country song he was listening to on the local radio station — vocalized wailing about pain, longing, love lost, moving on…

  Luck was finally with him when he managed to tuck the car into a cozy spot alongside the coffee shop just as the former occupant drove off. He saw Merle sitting at the window. Good, he showed. Myron wasn’t at all sure, since he really didn’t know him that well, and he seemed hesitant on the phone. He caught Merle’s eye as he got out and waved. Merle waved back — a good sign.

  Myron’s familiarity with Merle was based on a single encounter that summer. He literally crossed paths with him while walking through “College Park,” a mishmash of little streets bordering on the campus, with tiny, mostly ramshackle bungalows and duplexes and a couple of low-rise apartment buildings thrown into the mix. Modest income, low-rent oozed through the neighbourhood, emphasized by peeling paint, unkempt lawns, and broken down cars in the driveways, now covered with a thick blanket of snow. Myron regularly took this route with Ted (weather permitting), a short cut to Robin’s Donuts. That day, Ted wasn’t around, and Merle just happened to stroll out of the Maintenance Building, headed to the same destination.

  Merle had noticed Myron’s Audi, which piqued his curiosity. He launched into a number of poignant questions, like who made it exactly, what were the specs, was it expensive, and where did he buy it? With that point of interest as a foundation, they hit it off, at least for the purposes of that particular occasion.

  “I think that’s a drug house,” Merle noted, pointing to one of the dilapidated houses of College Park. They had pretty well exhausted their car conversation. “I come this way quite often, and I’ve seen some dodgy dudes making their way there.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Seen more than a few slink to the door, rap on it. Always opened a crack, then, just enough to enter — followed by a quick exit.”

  As if to confirm Merle’s observation (which for Merle, Myron surmised, became more like a stakeout), a badly painted purple Chevy Impala cab rolled slowly by and then came back after, it appeared, circling the block. It stopped a discreet distance beyond the college parking lot. Four stubbly men with sketchy faces and dark windbreakers spilled out and nervously dispersed, only to re-emerge one by one at that particular door.

  “See?” Merle emphasized. “What else can it be?”

  It certainly looked like it. After their in-and-out business, they slunk off, heads down, necks compressed, ball caps pulled over the eyes, the tell-tale taxi suddenly sitting at the end of the street.

  “Yep,” Myron confirmed. “Something fishy is definitely going on…”

  Later that summer, Myron pointed the abode out to Ted on their walk, but they spied no lurking dudes or clandestinely developing queues. The bungalow appeared abandoned, empty, with the dirty blinds gone. A small sign in the window beckoned them forward.

  “Can you make that out?” Ted asked, squinting.

  “An announcement of some sort — printing’s too small,” Myron responded.

  “Maybe your drug house moved — new business location?” Ted wondered.

  They kept moving closer until they got within range.

  “Nope,” Myron replied. “Nothing like that…” And he shook his head. Talk about curiosity killing the cat…

  The notice read: “Smile, you’re on camera.” It was signed: “RCMP.”

  I’ll have to ask Freta about that, Myron thought as he finally procured his coffee and settled into his seat across from Merle.

  “Sorry I’m a little late. Can you believe the traffic?” Myron said, setting his cup of java down on the table.

  “Not a problem. Just got here myself.”

  Merle Morgan was a scrawny, scruffily shaved man in his early thirties with nervous hands busily molesting the coffee mug. His rheumy eyes took in Myron without questioning the obvious. Why did you phone and what is this meeting about?

  “So…” Myron hesitated; he needed to ease into a conversation and ask the critical question (at least in his mind) in a way that invited an honest, unfettered response. The profundity that came out was, “How are you?”

  “Better now. I was shook up, that’s for sure, but getting better now. I’ve been given some time off to help get over this.”

  Myron nodded sympathetically. Good; they were on the same wavelength intuitively. Merle seemed to want to talk about his gruesome discovery without prompting. “It must have been awful.”

  “That it was,” he said, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “Sat there stiff as a board, staring straight ahead. In that fur coat and furry cap, she looked like one of those babushka dolls — you know — like from Russia.

  “Right…”

  “Don’t think I’ll ever forget it, that’s for sure.”

  “I can imagine. I read about it in the Daily Reporter.”

  “Yeah, the paper got that from the cops.”

  “No one interviewed you?”

  “Well, sort of. I couldn’t say much, because there was to be an investigation, and the cops didn’t want any of the details out in public. Said they’d handle the press, give the official statement. An Edmonton Journal reporter phoned and left a number of messages, but I haven’t called back. I was told not to talk about what I saw until they could fig
ure it out.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “Nope.”

  “So the RCMP are the only ones you gave your statement to.”

  “Yeah, got asked a lot of questions about what I saw, did I see anyone else, what time and all of that. A young, pretty cop went through all that — why?”

  Merle’s eyes narrowed as a light bulb suddenly flickered in his brain. Myron could see that Merle was getting suspicious about this meeting, which Myron had passed off as “long time no see” and “heard you had a nasty experience… How about doing coffee…”

  Myron decided to be as honest as he could possibly be with Merle. He needed to gain his confidence, and being upfront seemed the best way. He explained that he’d been enlisted by the same lady officer whom he’d talked to. She wanted help to gather information because he knew the institution and the people involved. He appreciated and respected the fact that Merle was instructed not to discuss the case with anyone, and he didn’t want to pry unnecessarily, but if he could go over it one more time — just to hit the check marks…

  Merle seemed to accept Myron’s verbiage at face value and simply nodded. “No big deal to me. I really didn’t see anything useful after I found her. And that’s what I said to the corporal — had a funny name… Freda — Freda Horsey or something like that. Seemed kinda young to be in charge…” Merle trailed off.

  “Freta Osprey,” Myron corrected. “And yes she’s young, and I just wanted to follow up.”

  “Can follow up all you want, but like I said, didn’t see anyone and really don’t know anything other than there was the president of the college frozen stiff behind the wheel of her car. By the way, what’d you think is going to happen to that Olds of hers?”