The Bone Seeker

by M. J. McGrath

  Sam Oolik shifted his weight and tightened his jaw.

  ‘I don’t know how much more help you need. I told you what I seen and we expected you and that mixed-dough cop to have brought that Cree fella in by now. Our girls ain’t safe.’

  ‘We got to build a case, Sam.’ The arrest of Namagoose and Saxby was beginning to feel like a forgone conclusion. She realized that she’d given up saying they were keeping an open mind.

  ‘You can help with that,’ she said, holding up the evidence bag containing the knife she’d fished out of the lake. It wasn’t Saxby’s knife. In a way it would have been easier if it had been. But its position in the mud at the bottom of the pool made it a potentially vital piece of evidence. They needed to find out who owned it.

  Oolik stood up, brushing his hand over the back of his neck to rid himself of a mosquito. His eye scanned the contents of the bag. ‘How d’you think I can help?’

  ‘You sell a knife like this to anybody, Sam?’

  Oolik lurched back. ‘No, no, I meant, I don’t remember.’ He sounded a little panicked, as though he thought Edie imagined he had something to do with the killing.

  ‘Well, OK, then, in that case, I’ll pass it on to Sergeant Palliser to deal with.’

  Oolik lifted a staying hand.

  ‘Well now, hold on. Now you mention it, I do recall a knife with a blond-wood handle sitting on a shelf in the storeroom. It just slipped my mind for a moment. That Sergeant Lemming’s always threatening to report me for not keeping proper records.’

  ‘You help me now, he’s gonna stop, Sam. You have my word on it.’

  The shopkeeper relaxed. ‘Say we take a look at the orders book.’ He led her to a tiny room at the back of the cashier’s desk and took a black file down from a bookcase, letting fly a bunch of loose papers. Propping a pair of glasses on his nose, he scanned the list, shaking his head.

  ‘How’s about we call the wholesaler, give him the serial number?’ Edie said, with a breeziness she didn’t feel. She’d already written it down in her notebook.

  Seeing the wisdom of this, Oolik took the notebook and returned a moment later from his phone call with a triumphant look on his face. ‘Came up on the supply plane a couple weeks back. But, like I said, I can’t find no record of who ordered it.’

  An idea came to Edie. ‘Anyone other than you and Ahnah have access to the storeroom?’

  Oolik rubbed his chin between the fingers and thumb of his right hand. ‘Officially, no, but this hot weather, we’ve been keeping the door to the office open, let the air in. The key’s usually hanging on that hook there.’ He pointed to an open key store on the wall just inside the door.

  ‘The First Nations fella, Namagoose, the tall one you saw talking to Martha Saturday morning, he come inside the store?’

  Oolik rolled the name around his mouth, hawked up then spat on the floor. ‘Well, see, I can’t say as I actually saw him come in the store. But there’s nothing to say he didn’t.’

  Edie looked around. It would have been difficult for anyone to have walked from the entrance to the storeroom without being spotted.

  ‘But you didn’t actually see him in here.’

  Oolik pushed his baseball cap back and scratched his scalp. ‘Well now, that depends on what you mean by “see”.’

  • • •

  At the detachment the message light was blinking again. Sammy had called to report that Edie’s DVD player back home in Autisaq needed fixing. In any case, he added, he probably wouldn’t be needing it, since he was thinking of borrowing a boat and coming over to Kuujuaq to visit Willa. Thought to stay in Edie’s tent a couple of days.

  Edie waited for the end message beep and pressed delete. She didn’t want to have to deal with her ex right now. Whatever she said to him he’d probably come anyway. He was like that; once he’d made up his mind to do something, he’d do it. For now, though, she decided to go over to the landfill, see if she could find that knife box. The trash cart came round on a Monday morning. If anyone had thrown away the packaging then it would have been taken to the dump then. Might be fingerprints on it.

  She picked up her hunting rifle from the gun cupboard and the harpoon handle from the tent and set off along the road which snaked around the headland to the garbage dump. A few years ago a cardboard box would have been quite a prize in Kuujuaq. A family would have put it to some use, if only as a toy for the kids. Nowadays, Inuit were becoming more like qalunaat, casual with their possessions, and lots of reusable stuff wound up in landfill.

  A stinking, raggedy range of garbage lay scattered in a large hollow, blooming tundra all around it. Guillemots and ravens scratched through the leavings. At the far end of the pile a mother fox and her three cubs scrabbled at a plastic bag. As Edie approached, the fox hurried her cubs to safety and the birds rose and flapped off across the crumble of melting sea ice. But the search yielded nothing and a while later she decided to call it a day. As she stretched to ease her back and wipe her face with her hand, her eyes fell on her watch. It was nearly 4 p.m. and she’d promised to be round at Chip’s house in an hour for some early supper of river trout.

  The way back took her past the Shoreline Bar. The place was so busy that there were customers standing outside in the street. She slowed the ATV. A half-dozen off-duty soldiers stopped flirting with the Inuit girls beside them to check her out. A few local men looked on with clouded expressions on their faces. There was an odd, unsteady atmosphere in the air, as though a fight might break out at any moment. The scene took her back to her conversations with Willa and Tom Silliq. The investigation was three days old and they still had no real idea what had happened to Martha in the hours and minutes leading to her death. She keyed off her vehicle and went over. Martha’s picture was in her pocket.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey,’ the men said. She drew out the photograph.

  ‘Any of you ever see this girl?’

  The men passed the picture between them. One whistled. Another quipped that he wished he had. One by one they shook their heads.

  • • •

  Thanking the men and turning her ATV around, Edie began to bump towards the nursing station. She wanted to make sure forensics got the knife before they left.

  Inside the waiting room Anna and Mick were bagging up and labelling their samples and making last-minute checks of their equipment. She greeted them, then walked over to the office where Derek and Luc were hunched over the desk, filling out reports. The two men seemed frazzled and agitated. Derek rolled his chair, his lips cracking a hello. The dark circles under his eyes had taken on a sallow, yellowish hue. His nostrils flared.

  ‘Jesus Jones, Edie, where have you been?’

  She pulled the bag containing the knife from her daypack. It landed on the desk with a thud. He inspected the contents while she filled him in on her visit to the lake, the conversation with Sam Oolik then the trip to the dump.

  ‘Oolik’s checking his records over, see if he can find out who ordered it,’ Edie said.

  ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Derek said sourly. ‘I’m always telling that old walrus fart to clean up his books.’ He sounded irritable, but she sensed that the target of his annoyance was himself. He flipped the blade over in its bag. ‘Looks to me this is in the right ballpark at least. I’ll get Flaherty to take it back to Iqaluit, run some tests.’ His lips thinned. ‘I guess I should have thought of checking the store before now. What with the supply, it’s just been so hectic.’

  ‘How’d it go?’ she asked.

  ‘The usual pile of crap. Missing bills of lading, cargo cock-ups, that kind of thing, but it looks about done at least. Captain Larsen’s keen to weigh anchor and set sail sometime later tonight. It’s all gotten a whole lot more pressured. I think Larsen’s shitting himself. Northwest Passage opening up, some fierce competition on the horizon. Sometime not far off we’re gonna have t
o get used to ships up here all year round.’

  ‘Great for the local economy,’ Luc said.

  Derek cast him a sidelong look. ‘An optimist, huh?’

  ‘Goes with the job,’ Luc said.

  Edie cut in, ‘Did Mackie and Flaherty come up with anything?’

  ‘Some head and pubic hair from the bedroom,’ Luc said. ‘Unlikely to be Martha’s from the colour. A couple of partial footprints left by men’s boots. Flaherty thinks it’s pretty much guaranteed they’ll correspond to army-issue footwear. Body fluids on the bed linen. Semen and vaginal fluid most likely. Only Martha’s prints on the door handle, which suggests she probably went into that room of her own free will. No bloodstains. Most likely the murder happened up on the cliffs or, more likely, at the lake. They didn’t find anything at the crime scene itself, though, except for a set of new footprints.’

  ‘Probably mine,’ Edie said. ‘What about the body?’

  ‘That’s more complicated,’ Derek cut in. ‘Anna’s decided she needs to take Martha down to Iqaluit. We’ll just have to find a way to break the news to Charlie.’

  ‘You mean I will.’

  ‘Nice of you to volunteer. Anna’s saying she doesn’t expect to find any foreign body fluids, hair or skin residues, because of the length of time the body was in the water. Confirming the approximate death window is gonna be tricky too – but if she can give us the green light on the Ambien in Martha’s blood we might not need anything else. I’m gonna speak to the prosecutor, see if we can move first thing tomorrow.’ He moved towards the door, a little smile playing on his lips. ‘Before you go see Charlie, Edie, it might be an idea to take a shower. And use plenty of soap.’

  • • •

  By the time Edie returned from speaking with the Salliaqs, the mosquitoes had disappeared, the temperature had fallen, the sky was a shroud and she was wrung out. Charlie had, predictably, kicked up like crazy, accusing her of betraying her culture and being on the side of the qalunaat, and she’d had to promise that she would personally ensure that Martha’s body was returned complete for burial in Kuujuaq when the case was done. Inside her tent she oiled and braided her hair, then put on her best sealskin parka, the one with the red rick-rack. It was just after 9 p.m. She was four hours late for supper.

  Chip scowled at the door.

  ‘Dammit, Edie.’

  She squeezed past him into the snow porch. ‘It’s been a tough day.’

  He closed the door behind her and sighed.

  ‘There’s no food,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’ She reached out and kissed him. Hard.

  • • •

  Afterwards, they lay together, their limbs intertwined.

  ‘What made you so late?’ he said.

  She filled him in about the find at the lake but to her surprise, instead of being sympathetic, she saw his face stiffen and cloud over.

  ‘Did I do something?’ She moved closer, hoping to connect him back to her, but he backed away, sitting up and folding his arms around his legs. An awkward silence followed. She wished now that he weren’t so enigmatic, or maybe that she understood him better. In the space of just a few seconds they’d gone from intimates to almost strangers. Suddenly, it seemed too exposing to be lying naked with him so she rose from the bed and threw on her underclothes.

  ‘Perhaps I should go.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe it’s best if we take a break, Edie.’

  She swung around and saw everything she needed to see written on his face.

  • • •

  The late night sky had softened and hints of sunshine poked through patches of broken cloud. Kuujuaq was empty now, the last of the soldiers having returned to Camp Nanook some hours ago. As she passed the Shoreline Bar, Tom Silliq was hauling two trash bags into a dog- and bear-proof hideaway. She remembered she hadn’t eaten and she needed something to take her mind off the fight with Chip.

  Silliq greeted her with a tired smile.

  ‘I don’t suppose Susie got any hot food going?’

  Silliq flipped the lid of the hideaway and fastened the bolts. ‘No can do. We’ve been short-staffed. The boy who helps out sometimes didn’t show.’ Silliq balled up his hands and rested them on his hips. ‘We only just managed to fill orders.’

  ‘You mean Rashid?’

  ‘That’s the one. Susie makes excuses for him, says he gets migraines, whatever they are. Says she can’t get locals to do weekend shifts. Everybody wants to go off to summer camp. She seems to think it makes the place more unataqti friendly, have an outsider behind the counter. My reckoning, you take on an outsider you have no idea what you’re getting.’

  Edie exhaled. ‘I’m with you,’ she said.

  • • •

  The blinds in Derek’s window were drawn but Edie noticed that her tent was slightly open. Her first thought was that Chip had had a change of heart and she hurried over, calling his name, her heart lifting, then crumpling as a voice said, ‘I don’t know who you’re expecting but it’s just me.’

  It took her a moment to recognize the owner of the voice. She pulled back the tent flap and saw Sam Oolik sitting on the sleeping skins inside.

  ‘You been waiting for me?’

  ‘Not long,’ he said. ‘Good to carve out a little quiet time anyway. I found the order, thought you’d wanna see.’

  He handed over the battered black order book, a calloused finger marking the page. In the spot where his finger had sat was a line of Inuktitut syllabics with a misspelled English translation below. There was an order number, a value and a shipping cost. But it was the name in the final column that interested her.

  Oolik tapped the book with his right index finger and narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Oh I know you’re dating him, but there’s more to that Muloon fella than meets the eye. I seen him talking to the colonel over at the unataqti camp.’ He gave a triumphant snort. ‘These qalunaat work in packs like wolves. And they’ve got us surrounded.’

  19

  Derek woke with a thick head and a tongue like a dead seal and cursed himself for drinking too much. He swung out of bed, went to the bathroom and in the mirror saw eyes crusted at the edges and slimy at the inner corners. The flakes of dried saliva on his chin suggested he’d either been drooling or talking in his sleep. It took him a while to figure out that he’d been woken by the phone in the detachment office and that it was still ringing. Stumbling into the office, he plucked the handset from its cradle and cut the call. Moments later the ringing began again. He peered at the screen and recognized Edie Kiglatuk’s home number in Autisaq, which meant that the caller was likely to be Sammy Inukpuk, who was staying there. Derek was fond of the fella. Back in the spring they’d spent a chill, fearful night together on the sea ice in Alaska and damn nearly died. Something like that left scars and created bonds. All the same, he found the way Sammy still prowled around his ex-wife irritating. They seemed to have some kind of on–off thing that made him impatient whenever he got dragged into it. The way he saw it, they should get back together or leave one another alone.

  He picked up.

  ‘Hey, Sammy, you gotta know, this isn’t some kind of roommate situation we got here, this is a police detachment, OK? And we’re in the middle of a homicide investigation. I’ll get Edie this one time, but . . .’ He laid the phone down on his desk, tromped to the front door and yelled.

  Edie emerged from her tent pulling on a sweatshirt and rubbing her eyes. From the kitchenette where Derek went to make coffee and give them some privacy, he could hear her voice saying, ‘You already broke everything in my house, now you wanna come break everything here too?’

  He threw some grounds in the drip and with the first dark, bitter sip, felt his brain shift up a gear. Before long his mind began to scroll through the events of yesterday until it reached the conversation with the prosecutor late last night.
By the time the guy had finally returned his call Derek had already had a beer or two. He vaguely remembered kicking off the chat with a rant about how the homicide rate in the Barrenlands was now on a par with Mexico. There was something too about not even being sufficiently resourced to get a damned cell phone. It was kind of embarrassing to recall the bored tones of the prosecutor. Not that it mattered, not really. He’d got what he wanted out of the conversation, which actually had nothing to do with a cell phone (there being no tower for a thousand kilometres in any case) and everything to do with a green light to arrest Namagoose and Saxby. On one condition. The prosecutor wanted some forensics, ideally blood or other deposits on the men’s clothing or on the knife. The very least, confirmation of the presence of Ambien in Martha’s blood. No forensics, no arrest.

  He took another gulp of coffee and refilled his mug. Now that he was fully awake he allowed himself a little uplift of anticipatory glee. Sometime this morning Anna Mackie would call to confirm Luc’s initial findings. Then he’d inform Klinsman and head on over to Camp Nanook and by the end of the day the Killer Whales would be in custody and he’d be contacting his equivalent in Iqaluit, Sergeant Bill Makivik, to arrange their transfer to the jail there. It sounded almost too easy.

  He came out into the office as Edie was finishing up her call and was struck by a sudden, vivid memory of being woken in the night. He stopped a moment to consider whether he’d dreamed it then decided he hadn’t. Someone had definitely been hammering on the door. He’d got up and walked through the detachment office only to find no one there. He shivered at the recall of the damp rush of cold air.

  ‘Was that you last night?’

  She pressed her lips into a yes. There was some new anxiety in her eyes he hadn’t seen before. He handed her the mug of tea he’d made her.

  ‘Bad night?’

  ‘You could call it that.’

  As she filled him in on Sam Oolik’s visit, he felt an obscure need to comfort her. That Chip Muloon could have had anything to do with Martha Salliaq’s death honestly hadn’t occurred to him. But something less honourable stirred in him. He was so near to making those arrests and this was a complication he could do without.