by Eric Wright
“He had a sister who owned the bakery in Larch River.”
“Where?”
“Larch River. Where I’m from. Where Marlow went. Where he got killed last week.”
Bailey thought for a moment. “I doubt if it comes back to here. But if you see any strange Indians in, where? Lark River…?”
“Larch River.”
“Right. Ask them where they come from. Come on back to the office now and we’ll look him up.”
In Bailey’s office they were able to consult his records without interrupting the staff, and Pickett wrote down the details on a slip of paper. “Left here July sixteenth,” he repeated as he wrote it down. “There’s a forwarding address.”
“Can you tell me anything else about him?”
Bailey walked across the room to a two-way radio that had begun talking, reminding him that if he didn’t get back to the camp soon there would be no ice left by morning. As he talked back he waved at Pickett to indicate that was all the time he had for the policeman. Then, as Pickett was leaving, Bailey said, “Come for a ride. I’ve got to take a couple of fan belts up to the camp.”
To Pickett’s surprise, “a ride” meant a flight. They drove down to the town dock and climbed into a tiny bush plane with Bailey’s legend on the side. They took off without fuss and soared above the Lake of the Woods, circling north.
The land below became mostly lakes and rivers, separated by patches of bush with, here and there, gray bulges of glacial rock. “Like it?” Bailey shouted above the noise of the engine.
“It’s fantastic. What’s that down there?” He pointed to a huge log building surrounded by a dozen cabins.
“Minaki Lodge. Pretty, isn’t it? The railway built it in the thirties to encourage passengers. Got its own golf course, see? Changed hands a lot since then. I think the government had to take it over finally. Not economically viable.” He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “Wanna try flying it?”
“I just do that in video games. We’re going down, for Christ’s sake.”
Bailey laughed and straightened the plane up. “So what else do you want to know?”
Pickett waited a minute to be sure Bailey didn’t try to loop the loop. “First, you sure he was working for you in May?”
“Oh yes. He was on the payroll from the middle of the month, ready for the pickerel season, which opens toward the end of May.”
“Was he a professional guide?”
“That was his first season, I think. But guiding from Circle Lake isn’t very tricky. It isn’t really guiding, not in the real sense. Just driving fisherman around to where the fish are. Course, it looks like guiding to people from Detroit, say. Marlow could have picked up enough in a week to get by. In a month he would have looked like a professional, unless he got into an emergency.”
“Would there be people around who would remember him?”
“Maybe Henry Goose or Joe Littledeer. I don’t think I have any white guides from seven years ago. They come and go. Hang on.” He put the plane into a shallow descending curve and flew low over a small lake. “I crashed here once,” he said. “Ran out of gas.”
Pickett looked down at the tiny patch of water. “Is there enough room?”
“Just. I had to unload everything and take a run at it.”
“Christ. How’s your gas gauge now?”
They landed at Circle Lake and Bailey disappeared with the fan belts. Half an hour later they were in the sky again, on their way back to Kenora.
“I asked a couple of the guys if anyone had heard of your boy,” Bailey said. “No one had except Damon Whitetail. He hasn’t seen him since he left camp, but he remembered him. A mean son of a bitch, he said, but we knew that.”
At the dock in Kenora, there was a small party waiting for them. Two fishermen and a camp worker on their way to the camp. Bailey became the professional host as soon as his feet touched the dock, leaving Pickett to look after himself.
He drove back to Winnipeg, counting the pluses: the view from the train and the view from the air. What more could you want? Learning about Marlow’s background had become almost secondary to the good time he was having.
CHAPTER 22
The address on the slip turned out to be a rooming house in the north end of the city, on a street of tired and damaged houses. There was an old washing machine in the front yard of the house Pickett was looking for, and a pile of broken furniture stacked on one end of the porch. Pickett did not see much hope of furthering his research here, but the woman who answered the door seemed much less rundown than her house. She was thick-bodied, about sixty, he thought, but with the long yellow hair of her youth. She agreed immediately that she remembered Marlow.
“Sure,” she said. “I remember everyone. Good-looking boy.” She flexed her arms and rippled her shoulders in imitation of Marlow’s muscularity. “What do you want to know? Come into the kitchen.” She held the door open and led him to a chair at the kitchen table. She picked a shred from between two teeth and spat into the sink. “Fleisch,” she said. “Cochon. Meat. I speak five languages.” Then, “He in trouble? He only stayed a couple of weeks. I’ll show you.” She ran into another room and returned with a handful of cheap receipt books. “I keep everything,” she said. “Had a goddamn tax audit once.” She flipped back and forth, then said, “Here. He came July 17.” She flipped ahead. “See, he stayed one more week, then he was gone.”“Was he broke?”
“Sure. Why else would he leave?”
“Would you carry him until he got a job?”
“Him and everybody else? Pay in advance or leave. Nothing else works in this end of town. I don’t remember him not paying, though. Maybe he just left.”
“Did he have any friends in the house? Or any who called in?”
“I don’t remember any, but I don’t allow friends past the front step. They have to wait outside. I’m pretty sure he was by himself. He might have had to share a room with someone here, but who knows who that would be after all this time? Is he in trouble?”
“He’s dead.”
“That could be a problem for him. What’s it all about?”
“I’m trying to find out who killed him.”
“You a cop? I thought so. We get a lot round here.” Suddenly she stood up. “Well, lotsa luck. If you don’t need a room, I got work to do.”
Pickett wondered if he had done something wrong; once she had heard his business, she lost interest. In this part of north Winnipeg, people appeared and disappeared all the time.
Now Pickett moved on to the library of the Winnipeg Free Press. He was not sure what he was hoping to find, but he would know it when he saw it: some reason, a significant unsolved crime, perhaps, that caused Marlow to leave town in a hurry and bury himself in Larch River. He suspected that the item he was hoping to find would occur at the end of July, but he started on July 16 and read forward for a month. After two complete readings he had found nothing: then, the third time through, he found the story of the armed robbery of a convenience store. A man had been caught, his occupation given as a fishing guide. Pickett read the item carefully. Two men wearing face masks had robbed a ma-and-pa store and killed the owner, a Chinese named David Poon. The killer had panicked and dropped the cash box as he fled, but the other man had tripped and been grabbed by a passerby, who held him until the police came. Paul Devereaux was charged with attempted robbery and manslaughter.
With the help of the newspaper’s librarian and a computer, Pickett followed the fortunes of Devereaux all the way to the trial, when he received ten years in Stony Mountain. After the first three newspaper stories, there had been no mention of the other man. He spent a further hour reading, but he could find no other crime that fitted so well what he was looking for, and he crossed his fingers and went back to his room to make a phone call.
So far Pickett had gone around the Winnipeg police, hoping to work quietly, but now he needed to know if Devereaux was still in jail, and he should start looking for som
eone else. He was trying to avoid having Devereaux’s name go back to Wilkie until he was ready, because Wilkie would know right away what Pickett was up to and raise the country looking for Devereaux. That was his job.
He would try the jail first.
He called Stony Mountain and identified himself as Sergeant Mumble of the Bail and Parole unit in Toronto. He had received a query, he said, about a man named Devereaux that should have come to them. That is, the computer showed that Devereaux was still in Stony Mountain Penitentiary. Or was he on parole? Could they confirm that?
No problem, the guard said, and then, three minutes later, said that neither was strictly true; Paul Devereaux had been granted parole a couple of months ago, but he had not reported as he should last week and therefore, being in breach of parole, he would go back inside when they found him. A message to keep an eye out for him had gone across the country; that was the message that had probably landed on Pickett’s desk, the guard said.
Pickett put down the phone, praying that the guard would be sufficiently uninterested not to tell his superiors about the call, because they would probably find it very much stranger than he did. Pickett went down to the bar, drank a beer and ate some pretzels, then ate some liver and bacon in the restaurant and walked back to his room to make a start on the last volume in the Poldark series, trying not to think, unable to avoid knowing that what he had just heard was not the end, but the beginning.
Early the next morning, Pickett called Bailey’s office again. Bailey was not in from the lodge yet; he stayed at the lodge until all the guests were safely out on the lake, fishing, usually about nine o’clock, then flew in to the office. Pickett asked the clerk to leave a message for Bailey to phone him, and went back to reading Poldark. Bailey called at nine-thirty. “What’s up?” he wanted to know. “Not too long, though; I’ve got people here waiting to fish.”
“Just a quick one. Did you ever hire a guy named Paul Devereaux?”
“I did indeed. A long time ago. Want to know where he is now? Try Stony Mountain. He’s doing a stretch for manslaughter.”
“Bad bugger?”
“Funny you should ask. No. I remember thinking at the time that it must be some kind of accident. Breaking and entering, a little thieving, sure. All of that. But shooting someone? I wouldn’t have thought that was in Devereaux’s repertoire.”
“Why wasn’t he working for you at the time? It was mid-summer.”
“I’m not sure. No bad reason if he wasn’t. I think he was trying to make a regular life for himself in the city. He wanted to settle down, get a twelve-month-a-year job. Maybe he wanted to get married. I think he drove a truck for a plumbing company that went bankrupt and he was out of a job, and his girlfriend left him. He had a drinking problem, I think. He asked me if he could come back, but I had a full team and, obviously you don’t know about fishing, Mr. Pickett, but July and August are my slack times. I need extra people in May and September. So I couldn’t use him, and next thing I know he’s in jail. Look, I have to go. You’ll find Devereaux in Stony Mountain.”
“He’s out now. On parole. One last question: were he and Marlow pals?”
“Jesus Christ. Now I know why you’re looking for Devereaux. I remember at the time wondering who the other guy was. Hang on, I’ve got to stroke a couple of guests. Give me a few minutes.”
Pickett heard him put the phone on his desk, and the sound of his voice being cheery to someone else. When he returned, he said, “They were pals, yes. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. See, Devereaux was kinda slow. Not retarded, but he liked to take things one at a time, you know? But he was a helluva good guide, and when Marlow came up I got Devereaux to look after him, show him the ropes. Devereaux took a job like that very seriously, and he worked at looking after Marlow. Then, the way I remember it, Devereaux went to town and it was just after that that I fired Marlow. If Devereaux’s out he would go looking for his old pal, I would think. He’d have a score to settle.”
“I was wondering how he got out there. He’s not supposed to leave town, so he wouldn’t have wanted to use the trains, even if he could have gotten a ticket, and he wouldn’t have wanted to go through the airport. Winnipeg’s a pretty small town …”
“Don’t let them hear you say that.”
“He wouldn’t want to risk being seen by one of the cops he’s come up against.”
“So?”
“He couldn’t rent a car, unless he used false ID. And a man of his age would have trouble hitchhiking these days, even if he could avoid being picked up by the highway patrol.”
“Speed it up, chief, will ya? This is interesting but I’ve got a line up here. So he probably stole a car.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“It’ll turn up. Best of luck. Hey! You mean Devereaux’s the guy who stole the car off our parking lot? Where’s Huntsville? Near Lark River?”
“Larch River.”
“That’s where they found it. Huntsville.”
“Huntsville could be on the way to Larch River.”
“Son of a bitch. Why didn’t someone ask me? No, they did. I said all along it was probably someone who knew that those cars would not be missed for a few days. He’d have a head start.” Bailey laughed. “This’ll be a story for the local cops.”
“Do me a favor. Keep it to yourself for a couple of days. Three. When they start looking for Devereaux and come to you for a description, then you can tell them you suspected all along.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say I’d like to work with it by myself for a couple of days.”
There was a silence, then a long laugh. “You’re doing this on your own, right? You don’t have any authority. But you know something the boys in the office don’t, and it could bring you some moola, or prestige, or maybe you just want to poke someone up the ass.” He laughed. “Sure. I’ll make you a deal. You give me a call when it’s over, tell me exactly what’s happened, you hear? I could tell this story round the fire for the next ten years. My guests’ll love it. Now I have got to go. There are two millionaires sitting on a little wooden bench outside, and at the moment they think that’s backwoods and cute, but they won’t for much longer. So you call me, you hear?”
“Wait a minute. One last thing,” Pickett pleaded.
“I hope those guys outside don’t have piles. What?”
“Did Devereaux leave an address with you?”
“Jesus, hold on.” He repeated the question to someone in the office, then came back on the line. “Here. His sister, I think.” He reeled off an address in Fort Carry, a Winnipeg suburb, and a telephone number. “That’s it,” he concluded. “Now can I go?” He hung up.
Pickett dialed the number of Devereaux’s sister. “I’m a friend of Paul Devereaux,” he said.
A male voice said, “Then if you see him, tell him I’ll set the dogs on him if he comes around here again,” and put the phone down.
Pickett waited half an hour and tried again, hanging up when the same man answered. He waited an hour the next time, and this time a woman answered. “This is Paul’s case officer,” Pickett said. “I think we’ve got a line on something he’d be interested in. Do you know where I can find him? He doesn’t seem to be in the halfway house anymore.”
“I don’t know. He came around here when he got out of prison and I gave him a few dollars, but then my husband said I wasn’t to speak to him or see him again. Or anybody else connected to him. I gotta go.” She hung up.
* * *
The train left Winnipeg at one forty-five, traveling through northwest Ontario under a clear sky. All afternoon Pickett was content to watch the brilliant red and gold foliage, and its reflection in the blue of the lakes and the rivers.
He avoided the other passengers to give himself space and time to think about how he was going to tell Wilkie that he was probably holding the wrong man for the homicide, though not for robbing the body. Pickett had muddled his way to a much likelier suspect
and he didn’t think Wilkie would be pleased. But the chain of evidence in favor of the conclusion that Devereaux was their man was very strong. He wished he had been free to talk to someone who remembered the circumstances of Devereaux’s arrest and conviction, but now that Devereaux was again wanted by the police, he had to guess. Two men had robbed the store and only one was caught, so it was no great feat to guess that Devereaux had refused to tell them Marlow’s name, and had therefore endured a heavier sentence for his loyalty.
But the trial evidence showed that it was the other man who had had the gun; it was his fingerprints on the cash box, too, the prints the police had had for seven years, looking for the owner. And the second man had disappeared—with the gun. Marlow had left his rooming house two days later, presumably after a period of funk, realizing then that he had not been identified by Devereaux for his part in the robbery. He had one place to go, to his sister in Larch River. He had no money to get there. Did he hitchhike? Probably not. Perhaps a phone call to Larch River had got him his fare. And when he arrived, did he tell Betty what he had done? Or later, perhaps? Because at some point she had tried to construct an alibi for him by altering the date of his arrival in her daybook. But that wouldn’t have worked until recently, when the day of his arrival had faded from the memories of the locals. In fact she might have been shielding him for the whole seven years, which would account for her refusal to marry Caxton. She could never be certain that one day he would not have to assist in the arrest of her brother for homicide. (On the other hand, she had just agreed to marry Caxton, and had given Marlow his marching orders.)
When he was tired of thinking, Pickett moved to the club car in search of conversation. Most of the passengers were retired Americans with whom he had something in common, and he looked forward to a chat about the old days, but almost immediately he was joined by an English journalist who was writing a story about the train for his newspaper. He was already three-parts drunk, and after a couple more drinks he became deeply sentimental about “this incredible vastness, I mean this stunning wilderness untouched except by seaplane.”