by Jon Redfern
“Get a warrant to search the truck. I want that blanket seized. As soon as we can. Also, Johnson, take backup, another house warrant, and get Hill out of bed. Break in the door and drag him out if you have to.”
Dodd and Johnson nodded and seemed to Billy a little stunned by his sudden anger.
“Don’t look at me, Johnson. We’ve got evidence, maybe, and a lead — albeit a chancy one — and we can’t wait around.”
“Yes, Billy.”
“Dodd, you get Marilyn Black on the phone. She worked with Sheree Lynn Bird. Tell her I want to see her.”
“You got it.” Dodd rose.
“Remember, we have a mutilated body, no prints, no firm leads, only one possible motive.”
“You really think this Hill will lead us anywhere?” Johnson’s voice was full of concern.
“In circles. But sooner or later we’ll bump into something worthwhile.”
Billy watched the two officers leave, his mind returning to the image of Darren Riegert’s body on the morgue’s steel table, boots splattered with blood. He then picked up his empty coffee cup and neatly pressed the Styrofoam sides together before dropping it into the metal garbage can by the desk.
Mrs. Morton held the door open and in her obedient manner welcomed Billy into her apartment. When he asked her if he could look around, and when he presented her first with a consent-to-search form, she blushed with embarrassment and signed the sheet without reading it. The official search warrant, folded in Billy’s pants pocket, would not be necessary unless she put up resistance. But Billy explained what he needed to search out, and Mrs. Morton kept agreeing. “Yes, Inspector. He’s a good boy, my Blayne.”
Once she’d left him alone, Billy looked around the living room. Not much was there. A couple of old chairs and a TV. There were no pictures on the walls, no evidence of a newspaper or a magazine. It reminded Billy of a storage space, a spare room where people put unwanted furniture.
In Blayne’s bedroom, three of the walls were covered in posters of heavy metal bands. Taped on the wall above the single bed and printed on a banner made of newsprint were the words Mene Mene Tekel. Out came the notebook. Billy sat on a low stool by the door and scanned the room, first describing the cupboard full of Blayne’s huge boots and jeans, then the unmade bed and the chest of drawers, open and spilling T-shirts and underwear. The carpet was stained with patches of what looked like tomato juice and coffee. The curtain on the window was the kind of orange plastic netting found on construction sites as a barrier fence. The air felt brown; it reeked of unwashed socks and stale cigarette smoke.
Billy pulled the stool closer to the unmade bed. The top sheet had been pulled up as if Blayne had wanted to make the bed and then had stopped. The pillow was plumped into a tight ball; the blankets were a creased roll and shoved to one end. Billy leaned closer and examined the crumpled, dirty sheet lying at the foot of the bed. Small pieces of dried mud lay like coarse powder. Billy noticed the mud was also on the blanket just above the soiled sheet. Blayne must have lain down with dirty shoes. Lifting the corner of the blanket, Billy found more chunks of dried mud. In amongst them were smaller, darker pieces. Taking a Ziploc from his pocket, Billy folded it over his right hand and picked up one of the darker pieces. It looked like grapeshot. In the light of the window, he confirmed it was a dried mouse turd. Billy gathered up more, along with the powdery dust, and folded the Ziploc back over his hand to capture the pieces inside the plastic. This was a break: if the mud matched the consistency and type of that found in Satan House and the garden, it could stand as circumstantial evidence in court, as would the mouse faeces. Neither was enough, though, for a conviction. What was needed was hard evidence placing Blayne at the murder site at the right time on Friday night.
Billy next rummaged through Blayne’s jeans and dirty laundry. He was hoping to find a T-shirt or a pair of pants Darren’s size, his hunch being that Blayne had gone to the site, either as a witness or as a perpetrator, and then taken the naked boy’s clothes as souvenirs. All the drawers were searched; under the bed amongst huge dustballs, there was only a leftover film cartridge for the Polaroid. The camera itself sat perched on the bedside table. Billy felt let down. He stood alone, thinking, wondering if the room would reveal any other secret to him. If you wanted to hide something in this room, where would it be safe?
Billy lifted the mattress. The box spring had been cut open. Billy shoved the mattress off the bed and plunged his hand into the slit in the box spring. He pulled out a small square book with a white cover. THE CENTINAL was written in green letters. Below it the words HAMILTON JUNIOR HIGH. The date was May, the paper smelled new, recently printed. Billy flipped through the yearbook, its glossy pages full of one-inch-square colour portraits of the students. It was the same book Dodd had brought to the station, the school’s year-end graduation book. In the back were black-and-white six-by-sixes of the basketball teams, the chess club, plus random shots of students cheering from bleachers or mugging over plates of food. On page 20 were the rows of individual student photos and captions. Here was Mrs. Childs’s class, the names at least familiar to Billy from his interviews. In Blayne’s copy, the face of Cody Schow had been crossed over with black lines in the shape of a pentacle. In the space under the portrait was a line of handwriting. The letters were small and precise: “Death is Life.” Could the RCMP handwriting expert match this lettering to the crude printing on the Polaroids now kept in the station files? Darren Riegert’s picture was not marked.
Billy flipped back to the portraits of the principal and the teaching staff. Each one of the photos had a red X through it, thick lines drawn diagonally from corner to corner and ending in a neatly drawn imitation of a drop of blood about to ooze down the page. Over the title of the page in thin red letters was written “Death to All.” Billy stared at the book in the silence of the dim room; in his mind’s eye, he saw Blayne Morton crouched on the bed, his huge frame bent over the yearbook, cursing his teachers, his thick hand methodically drawing out each simulated drop of blood. Billy slipped the yearbook into a large Ziploc.
He then pulled apart the cut in the box spring, the coils wrapped in grey muslin. He pressed down on the spring to see if any resistance or noise might reveal another hidden object. Crouching, Billy again looked under the bed. His eye caught a thin white edge of cardboard between the box spring and the support slats. Billy propped up the box spring momentarily and slid out a narrow, flattened tie box.
It had been taped at the corners. Billy pried off the cover. Inside on the bottom were pasted six faded Polaroid snapshots of Darren Riegert. In one, Darren was standing wearing a leather jacket similar to the one in the Polaroid filed at the station. In another, Darren was talking to two figures whose faces had turned away from the sudden glare of the Polaroid’s flash. Two others showed Darren on the street, and the rest were snaps of him staring blankly at the lens as if he’d reluctantly agreed to pose. The inside of the lid had been stapled with a red cloth. A red magic marker outlined Darren’s name. In the upper and lower corners were miniature Valentines. Billy noticed two staples were loose, as if they’d been pulled out and then pressed back onto the cardboard. Under the red cloth, Billy felt the outline of another Polaroid. He gently pulled the cloth away. The Polaroid was facedown. Turning it over, Billy saw first the naked body, then the book and the knife just at the edge of the frame. Darren’s bony arms were held forward, his hands cupped over his exposed genitals as if he’d been suddenly surprised. His boots were still on. In the background stood the sink in the basement of Satan House.
Billy put in a call to the station and found Butch at his desk. The afternoon was still bright, and Billy was elated.
“Butch, I found evidence. I’m at the Morton apartment building.”
“You old dog.”
“I’ve bagged the items; I suggest we send a constable up to the hospital with an arraignment order. Keep Blayne under observation. His mother will go there soon and will probably tell him of my
visit, if he’s conscious. I’ll bring the items down for Johnson to look at. One is a photo that places Blayne at the site near or before the time of the hanging. It’s our best bit yet. Also, I found some . . . well, you’ll see. What we need is a witness, anyone who might have seen Blayne out and about on Friday to establish some time frame.”
“You think we’ve got enough for a conviction?”
“We have a start. Sheree Lynn Bird can testify to Blayne’s history of behaviour with Darren. I know it’s hearsay, but it can help dispel reasonable doubt. The picture I have is the clincher. If we can confirm the time, and get Blayne to confess to how and why he was there, we can begin proceedings.”
Tuesday afternoon had become very warm and windless, and as Justin cleared surface stone and worked the shovel blade into softer layers of soil, he wondered about the spirits of long-dead shamans and Blackfoot warriors, if this despoiled holy ground might conjure up vengeful curses. Would he and the others find themselves suddenly paralyzed or struck blind by the disturbed anger of an animal god? Soon his hands would be sifting soil through a metal screen and perhaps recovering a long-buried arrowhead, a sacred piece of worked bone, or a skull. Even though the dry heat was burning Justin’s skin, it felt comforting and oddly refreshing. He was sweating, and his back and arms felt revitalized by the digging and lifting. The morning’s fatigue had dissipated. When he and the others had stopped for lunch at 2:00, their roast beef sandwiches and sliced carrots had tasted as never before.
Now the air around him gave him inspiration.
Why not simply run away?
He could take the Greyhound bus into Lethbridge at the end of the dig. Patsy Hanson, he believed, would let him down. He could try her one more time, but she wouldn’t have the money. She would make him pull double duty — sexually and emotionally — and then refuse to give him the cash. At home, he could pack a suitcase, borrow his mother’s VISA card, and tell her he needed a weekend away. She wouldn’t mind. Once he reached Vancouver, he could get a job, then pay back his mother. He could wait on tables, lie low for a year. Yianni would have to write off his debt as a lost cause. Not even Yianni could track him to the coast.
And Karen? Why not persuade her to run away, too? There were lots of abortion clinics there. Maybe the two of them might keep the baby. No, Justin thought, don’t go there. After all, Karen said she loved him. Would she try to trap him into marriage if they decided to keep the baby? Oh, God. He shook his head.
Justin grabbed the handle of his shovel and started digging in earnest once again. He was surprised at how easy his new plan seemed, even if the Karen part was still not resolved. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He looked down. He had reached the level of soil where Randy and Sam Heavy Hand had said most of the ancient material probably lay buried. Here was the important part. Justin lay down his shovel, reached for his steel-meshed sifting screen. Around his square digging plot, there were four stakes joined by pieces of white binder twine. Each crew member worked in a similar square plot. Every day, once the digging and sifting had been thoroughly completed, the squares would be moved in a set pattern until the entire site had been examined. As a plot was completed, the soil was replaced, the shale covering like an outer skin of stone spread back over the ground. The Blackfoot frequently buried the skulls of elders in circles facing the mountain. Justin hoped to find one wrapped with a beaded cloth or a necklace.
Cloud was forming in the west as the sun began to move downwards into early evening. Justin had worked hard all afternoon. He slowed down his sifting. His hands were coated in grey rock dust.
“Have you found anything at all?” asked David. These were his first words to Justin since lunch.
“Dust and more dust.”
“Don’t lose hope, boys.” Cara’s voice was falsely cheery. At least she’s been working as hard as the rest of us, thought Justin. Her clothes were dust-covered. Her hands were encased in the thick cloth gloves she had brought along.
Randy had spent the afternoon pacing from plot to plot; Sam Heavy Hand had gone back to his half-ton and taken off for about an hour. He had returned to the site with a grey-haired woman in a long beaded dress. Sam and the woman had talked to Randy for a while, standing at the foot of the slope by the tree line. The woman was in her early sixties, Justin thought, her strict posture adding dignity to a face weathered by the sun. On her left arm, she wore a large silver bracelet. Later, she and Sam left, and Randy sat alone near the trees, talking on his cell phone.
“Come on, everyone.”
Randy was standing now on the edge of the plateau. “Put your tarps over your plots and gather up your shovels.”
“He sounds like an army sergeant,” said Cara.
The crew unfolded the tarps and spread them over the areas they had been sifting. They secured the corners with large stones taken from the surrounding scree. Climbing back down the slope towards the parked van, Cara sidled up to Justin.
“What’s got into Randy?” asked Cara.
“How do you mean?”
“Where have you been, Justin? Randy almost went ballistic when that old Indian woman appeared with Sam. Didn’t you notice?”
“Hurry, you two!” Randy’s voice rang out from the trees beyond.
“I thought Randy was here to help us with the dig,” Cara went on. “But half the time he was down in the trees with Sam.”
“So what?”
“Justin, you’re not very observant. I was surprised you are such a good worker.”
“Thanks.”
There was a blast from the van’s horn. David Home was running ahead, towards the open door of the van, and Randy was in the driver’s seat. Sam Heavy Hand was climbing into the cab of his half-ton as Justin and Cara broke out of the trees.
“You two planning on spending the night up there?”
Justin felt Randy was angry, not joking. “Sorry,” Justin answered.
He and Cara placed their tools on top of David’s in the back of the van.
“Careful,” Randy ordered, looking back over the seats at them. “Put the tools by the side. I don’t want a long hassle at the border unloading this van. Let’s make it easy on ourselves.”
As they buckled up, Justin noticed Randy raising his hand to Sam Heavy Hand, who signalled back from the cab of his half-ton.
“Now, everyone,” Randy said, his voice tired and edgy. “When we get to the border, please let me do the talking. We may be searched, and you’ll have to follow orders quickly. As we drive along, fill in these dig forms, describing exactly what you found — if anything — and the extent of your sifting. Just write down how many square feet you estimate you dug up and passed through the screen. I have to file these damned things in duplicate at both the American and Canadian sides.”
Cara looked at Justin. She was about to say something, but Randy started the engine and jerked the van forward. As he did, Sam Heavy Hand flashed his headlights twice and pulled his half-ton in close behind the van.
“Sam is coming over the border with us tonight, just to make sure everything’s in order,” Randy explained. They headed for the highway, the half-ton following closely.
Justin turned and looked back at Sam and noticed he was still wearing his sunglasses.
“Why does he have to come?” whispered Cara. “Who is he, anyway? Can’t Randy do this on his own?” She took hold of Justin’s hand. Her skin was cold and clammy.
The van moved under the low evening sun, the sky a gold suffused with pale blue. To the northeast, thunderheads formed over the plains, billowing pure white clouds with flat dark undersides promising hard rain. Randy drove in silence. Every once in a while, he’d look frantically into the rearview mirror and clear his throat. Justin noticed how Randy gripped the steering wheel. Cara and David filled out their dig forms, but Justin could hardly write on his. The van was speeding towards the border crossing, around the curves of the narrow road, and Justin feared his old bane, car sickness, might force him to ask Randy to slow dow
n. A couple of times, Cara turned and looked out the back window. She nudged Justin.
“Look.”
Sam was flashing his headlights, on and off. Each time he did, Randy accelerated. As the van pulled into the border crossing, the two flags — the American stars-and-stripes and the Canadian red maple leaf — were lifting in the cooling breeze of the coming night. Lights were on in both border shelters. The road was empty of cars and recreational vehicles. Through the firs, the dying sunlight made long and ominous shadows across the two-lane road.
“Quiet, everyone,” Randy ordered, even though no one was speaking. David Home, who had dozed off, sat up suddenly. Randy steered the van to the guard’s window on the American side and waited. The office was lit, but the desk was empty. Randy tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. No one appeared. Randy climbed out of the van. Sam Heavy Hand pulled up, though he did not get out of his half-ton. Randy ignored him, walked into the lit office, and called out. No guard seemed to be on duty. Cara moved closer to Justin, and they watched Randy leave the office and go around to the back of the building and call out into the darkening woods behind the fence. Randy then came back to the van and began honking the horn with short furious blasts. Justin turned and saw Sam Heavy Hand sitting still, his face like a mask and his sunglasses glinting gold in the failing light.
A woman in a brown uniform began walking towards them from the Canadian side of the border. Randy went out to meet her, and they shook hands. She smiled at Randy, spoke to him for a moment, turned, and walked back to the office on the Canadian side. Randy scampered back, climbed in, and headed slowly over the border and into the parking lot next to the Canadian customs house.