A Green Place for Dying

by R. J. Harlick

  first place.

  I’d overheard this while sitting in the shadow of the front counter of the Migiskan police station.

  “And we know what that means.” Will’s deep baritone came from the other side of the counter, where he was standing with his back to me. “The Ottawa cops are going to do piss-all, like they’ve been doing all along.” He thumped his fist on a desk to emphasize the point.

  I’d dropped by the small brick building to complain, and not for the first time, about hunters from the reserve killing either a moose or a deer on my property. While out hiking this morning, Sergei had sniffed out the kill site. A set of ATV tracks leading directly back to the reserve identified the culprits.

  “One fuckin’ day,” the police chief fumed. “That’s all the time the SQ spent searching. Said the dogs and investigators were needed elsewhere. Said they were confident Fleur wasn’t with Becky at the time of the murder. How in the hell do they know if they only spent one fuckin’ day?”

  Normally a roll-with-the-punches sort of man, this was the angriest I’d ever seen him. And I could tell from the stunned expressions on the faces of Sergeant Sam Whiteduck and Ellie Tenasco, the MPD clerk, that they were equally shocked.

  “The bastards didn’t even spend a day. It was more like a bloody afternoon. Christ, the crime scene was a fuckin’ forest, not some goddamn city street.”

  I wasn’t sure if he knew I was eavesdropping. I debated announcing my presence but figured I might learn more if I kept my mouth shut.

  “Now calm down, Chief. They probably had their reasons for cutting it short,” Sam said. A tall, thin reed of a man with a bristling brush-cut that accentuated the length of his narrow face, the sergeant was Decontie’s second-in-command.

  “Christ. They didn’t want to spend any more money on a fuckin’ Indian. That’s their only reason. I even offered them some men. It wouldn’t have cost them a dime. But they said it was outside our jurisdiction.”

  “Yeah, but Chief, maybe the Ottawa cops have new evidence that places Fleur elsewhere,” Sam suggested.

  “Not bloody likely. Nope, the only evidence is no evidence after an afternoon’s search of the crime scene.”

  “Did the SQ say when Becky was killed?”

  “A little over five weeks ago. That puts it at about a week after the girls were last seen.”

  “And the only thing we got that says they were together is that witness statement.” Although Sam’s eyes drifted in my direction, he made no sign to suggest he’d seen me. “That’s right, eh, Chief?”

  “Yeah, the woman at the Anishinabeg Welcome Centre.”

  Sam tried again. “You know, Chief, a lot can happen in a week. Maybe the SQ is right. Maybe Fleur wasn’t with Becky when she died.”

  Decontie stared hard at his subordinate then sighed. “Yeah, you’re right, son. I just got a little carried away. Christ, that frog made me angry. He knows my French ain’t too hot, but he wouldn’t speak English.”

  The police chief reached across the desk and helped himself from the tin of sugar-coated bannock, replenished daily by Ellie to feed his sweet tooth and those of other members of the seven-man police force.

  “Do you want me to talk to him?” Sam offered.

  Will wiped the sugar off his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nope, I understood enough. I don’t think you’ll learn anything more from that bastard. But you’re right, in one week the two girls could’ve easily gone their separate ways, that is, if they were together in the first place. Christ, it’s not as if they were friends. They’d only just met. But they went missing at the same time, so their disappearances gotta be connected.”

  “Yeah, you got that right, Chief.” Sam nodded. “So what do we do now?”

  “Becky’s murder makes me very nervous. Remember it was less than a year ago that another young Cree woman was found dead along Highway 5.”

  “But wasn’t that a lot closer to Gatineau?”

  “Yeah, but two native girls murdered within a year is too much of a coincidence for my liking. I hate to say it, but it reduces the odds of finding Fleur alive.”

  “Weren’t two other women, also native, killed a few years back?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’d forgotten about them, except they weren’t in the same area. Still, their bodies were found on the Quebec side too.”

  “How was Becky killed, boss? Maybe they were all killed the same way.”

  “I don’t know about the others, but Becky was killed by multiple stab wounds. The coroner thinks the murderer downed her by throwing a knife into her back but didn’t kill her outright. Then, almost as if he was wound-up by his failure, he stabbed her multiple times in the chest. And you know, Sam, something else has me worried.” Will paused to chew on another piece of bannock. “The coroner found some strange markings on Becky’s wrists and ankles.”

  “Like she was being kept a prisoner before she died, eh?”

  Will grunted. “And if they kidnapped her, they could have taken Fleur too.”

  “But surely this should be enough to get the Ottawa and Quebec police doing all they can to find her,” I piped up, forgetting that I was trying to pretend I wasn’t there.

  Will whisked around as the other two pairs of eyes focused on me. Sam smiled surreptitiously as his eyes met mine.

  “Meg, sorry, I didn’t realize you were there,” Will said. “I guess you must’ve heard me mouthing off. What can we do for you?”

  “I have another hunter complaint, but that can wait.” I stood up and approached the counter. “Sorry for listening in, but like everyone else, I’m worried too. Are you saying that neither police force is going to do anything more about finding Fleur?”

  “Like I said, the SQ are washing their hands of the case, insisting she ain’t their missing persons file. Christ, I hate these jurisdictional problems. And the Ottawa police mouth the words that they’re gonna put renewed effort into the case, but from the outset they’ve classified Fleur’s disappearance as a runaway, which means they do nothing.”

  “But Fleur isn’t the kind of girl to run away. She was all excited when I talked to her in the spring about starting her nursing studies this fall in Montreal. I didn’t get the impression it was something she would readily give up by running away.”

  “Yeah, trouble is she didn’t go to her uncle’s place like she was supposed to,” Will said.

  “Does anyone know why not?”

  “Nope. Apparently she really likes her uncle and stayed at his apartment downtown last year.”

  “I’m assuming this uncle isn’t the biker who turned up yesterday.”

  Will grunted. “I tell ya, if he hadn’t been Marie-Claude’s brother, I would’ve run him off the rez so fast. Last thing we need are bikers roaming our community. We have enough problems with drugs without help from outside. Nope, the Ottawa brother is considerably more upstanding. He’s a professor at Carleton University.”

  “Have the Ottawa police been able to determine where she did go?”

  “According to the woman at the Welcome Centre, she moved in with this Becky, a girl she’d only just met. The Ottawa police also have a witness at the apartment building where Becky lived saying he saw her with a native girl that fits Fleur’s description.”

  “But she never told her parents?”

  “Nope. The last time they had any communication with Fleur was in Somerset when they put her on the Ottawa bus. The Ottawa police were able to determine that she was living in Ottawa a good three weeks before her disappearance. Yet during that time she made no attempt to get in touch with her parents or her uncle. So I hate to say it, but it does show the signs of a runaway.” He paused and ran his hand through his short black hair. “Christ, I even thought she was a runaway.”

  “But you don’t think so any more.”

  “To tell you the truth, Meg, I don’t know what to think. But at this point it doesn’t matter. Becky’s murder changes everything.”

  “But if
you think the people that killed Becky might also have Fleur, surely the Ottawa police would come to the same conclusion and ramp up their investigation.”

  “So you’d think.” He shook his head.

  “So what are we going to do, Chief?” Sam asked.

  “The first place to start is with the crime scene. I want to satisfy myself that Fleur wasn’t with Becky when she died. But doing an official search is outside our jurisdiction. So I’m gonna propose the Lightbodys launch a private citizen’s search. No rule that says they can’t as long as they have the property owner’s approval. Since it’s government-owned Crown land, that shouldn’t be a problem. Then we’re gonna volunteer ourselves to make sure it’s done right.”

  “And what about the Ottawa side?” I asked.

  “I’m gonna do my damnedest to get the Ottawa police off their butts and onto the streets, pursuing all possible leads. We’ve gotta find that girl.” He paused. “If it’s not already too late.”

  Chapter

  Six

  "Thank God, Decontie has finally gotten off his butt and is doing something about Fleur.” Teht’aa shifted her gaze to me from the road zipping by in front of us.

  Her annoyance did little to mar the model-like beauty of her high cheek-boned features. In fact, a hot-blooded male would probably be drawn to her inflamed looks like a moth.

  Teht’aa was a result of a teenage pregnancy when Eric was playing hockey out west. Her mother, wanting nothing more to do with the young man who seemed more intent on living in the white man’s world than his own, returned to her northern Dené reserve, where she died shortly after their child was born. Eric never knew. It took twenty-two years for him to discover that he had a daughter. Teht’aa had been living with him on and off ever since.

  “Watch out!” I cried as another sharp curve fast approached.

  She flicked her eyes back to the road and manoeuvred Eric’s Grand Cherokee as expertly through this turn as she had the other twists of this narrow two-lane highway that clung to the ragged shoreline of the Gatineau River. Carless herself, Teht’aa was taking advantage of her father’s absence. Apparently he’d been on a big canoe trip up in the Northwest Territories before going to Vancouver for some GCFN meetings. But according to his itinerary, he would finally be coming home today. His flight wouldn’t land until early afternoon, too late for him to join the search, which was just as well. There was no way I could’ve spent ten minutes with him, let alone a couple of hours cooped up in a car.

  We were driving southbound on Hwy 105, known as the “Killer Highway” for its high incidence of traffic deaths. As if to reinforce this reputation, a car shot out of a driveway in front of us. Teht’aa braked, narrowly missing the rear bumper as the compact car veered into the opposite lane.

  “That stupid idiot didn’t even look,” Teht’aa cursed.

  “You could slow down,” I hazarded, releasing my grip on the dashboard. I supposed she was being heavier on the gas pedal than usual in her haste to get to the search site.

  She shot me an annoyed glance but did slow down … a bit.

  In addition to ourselves, we were transporting Wendy and her husband George, part of the overflow who couldn’t get seats on the two buses chartered to carry people to the location where Becky’s body had been found. We’d left the reserve as the sun lit up the spire of Migiskan’s All Saints Church and had been on the road for the past hour and a half.

  “Yup, Will just sat on his fat butt eating bannock,” Wendy quipped from the backseat before popping another Timbit into her mouth. Her plump, junk-food-fed figure made me wonder who was calling whom fat. It also suggested she was more at home in front of a TV than spending a day tramping through the bush. I wondered how long she would last.

  Like us, they hadn’t hesitated to join the search for one of their own. In fact, so many people had turned up at dawn at the Council Hall that the Lightbodys had to scramble to find additional transportation, which was why Teht’aa and I were in Eric’s Jeep.

  It had taken the Lightbodys the better part of a week to organize the search for their missing daughter. In addition to Decontie’s support, they were also using a volunteer organization specializing in such searches. The main hold-up had been the Quebec government, which had at first turned down their request to conduct the search on Crown land. But after it made headline news, a bureaucrat had reluctantly given his approval with the proviso that it be conducted under the oversight of the provincial police.

  Decontie had laughed. “Serves the SQ right,” he’d said. But he wasn’t expecting more than a nominal presence on their part, nothing for us to be concerned about.

  “But surely Will would’ve done something when her mother reported her missing,” I now asked. I’d been in the Far North when her parents raised the alarm.

  “Nada, zip, nothing,” Wendy answered. “He told Marie-Claude she wasn’t his problem. Since she’d gone missing in Ottawa, it was up to the Ottawa police to find her.”

  “I suppose in a way he’s right. Ottawa is outside his jurisdiction.”

  “Yeah, but she’s a member of our community. He coulda made the Ottawa police do something, eh? Instead he done nothing. He left it up to Jeff and Marie-Claude to try and get their butts moving.”

  I was sorry to hear this. I’d always respected the police chief and felt he did the best he could to maintain the peace and security of the thousand or so residents of the remote Quebec community.

  “At least he’s doing something now,” I said.

  “Almost two months later, when it could very well be too late,” Teht’aa shot back.

  “Jeez, I tell ya, this search is sure making me real nervous, eh?” Wendy said. “I figure it’s bad news if we find something belonging to Fleur. And I sure don’t wanna be the one to find her body.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” I replied. “Still, I think it has to be done. Hopefully we won’t find anything, and we can all breath easier knowing she wasn’t with Becky when she was killed.”

  “I sure hope you’re right,” Wendy sighed. “What a shame. Such a good kid. She never gets into trouble, not like a lotta kids on the rez. Mind you, Jeff’s pretty strict, so she probably doesn’t get much chance to get up to any mischief.”

  “I think she manages to do her bit,” Teht’aa chuckled. “I came across her and Pete Smith’s boy smoking pot in the woods behind the Rec Centre. And from the guilty expressions on their faces, I wasn’t sure what else they’d been up to.”

  George laughed. “Yeah, I figured she weren’t such an angel when I caught her with Eddy Tenasco at the pow-wow. Things were sure hot and heavy. She’d been drinking too, something I know Jeff sure don’t like.”

  Wendy answered. “I tell ya, I was kinda surprised he let her go to Ottawa on her own like that. But maybe Marie-Claude convinced him it’d be okay. After all, Fleur was gonna stay with her brother, the professor.”

  “Except she didn’t,” I said. “Anyone got any ideas why not?”

  “Nope, it don’t make sense,” Wendy replied. “And it don’t make sense she ran away. Jeez, I sure hope she’s okay.”

  “I think we’d all second that,” I said.

  A sudden chill seemed to fill the car as each of us lapsed into our own separate silence, afraid of where further discussion might lead us. The sun that had started the morning with such promise had vanished. Clouds heavy with moisture filled the sky, and the first drops of rain were splattering the windshield.

  “Oh crap, I didn’t bring my rain jacket,” Wendy wailed. “Or rubber boots.”

  “You ain’t gonna melt, honey,” was George’s flippant retort. “There’s too much of ya.” He followed this with a loud guffaw and a resounding slap on her thigh. In contrast to his wife’s lush flesh, George was stringbean thin, his face gaunt and bronzed from years of guiding wealthy fishermen and hunters.

  “Now stop that, George,” Wendy said, trying to sound annoyed, but she couldn’t quite hide from her voice the pleas
ure of being loved.

  Thankfully, the rain had slowed to a drizzle by the time we drove into Parking Lot 48 on the northeast side of Gatineau Park. I say thankfully, for in my rush to leave, I’d also forgotten my rain gear.

  A couple of SQ cops were leaning up against their cruiser, paying little attention to the few people who’d preceded us. I didn’t expect to see the bulk of the searchers for another twenty minutes or so. We’d breezed past one of the buses and left the other one in the Council Hall parking lot waiting for a searcher who suddenly remembered she’d forgotten to turn off her stove.

  A man wearing a fluorescent lime green vest approached us and identified himself as a member of Ottawa Valley Search and Rescue. After taking down our names on his clipboard, he told us to help ourselves to the hot coffee and donuts being doled out from the back of a nearby van.

  As the four of us walked to join the others crowded around the van, I pointed at the surrounding crush of trees and underbrush. “No wonder Will was so annoyed at the SQ for not spending more time. It would’ve been next to impossible to do a thorough search in only a few hours.”

  “Yeah, but do you think a bunch of amateurs can do any better?” Teht’aa said.

  “I’m sure these search guys are going to tell us what to do,” Wendy added. She stopped to zip up her jacket. “Brrr … it’s cold. It sure don’t feel like September, eh?”

  “At least the rain has stopped.” I zipped up my fleece jacket and stuck my freezing hands into my pockets. I’d forgotten my gloves too.

  “I tell you, if the missing girl were white, these cops would be crawling all over the place.” Teht’aa glanced in my direction. “No reflection on you, Meg.”

  I didn’t reply. Teht’aa never expected me to. A native activist, she often threw out these one-liners as if testing my own biases. Often her opinions were just a little too militant and one-sided for my liking, but in this case, I was inclined to agree. I’d had my own first-hand experience with the blinkers cops wore when dealing with natives.