The Bone Seeker

by M. J. McGrath

  Reaching for the pad he kept in the drawer of his nightstand, he drew three columns. At the head of one he wrote ‘Give up’, at the head of the second ‘Fight’, the third ‘Secret’. He began to write, filling first one column then another. By the time he was done, he’d convinced himself that giving up the case would only serve to destroy what little was left of his reputation in Kuujuaq. They already saw him as weak and a stooge for the south. It would look as though he’d caved in at the first sign of pressure. Which wouldn’t be so far from the truth. He would probably be able to swing a transfer to Yellowknife – he was still well thought of over that way – but his career in the Ellesmere Police would effectively be over and he would have a hard time living with himself. He picked up his pen and put a strike through the first column. The next two columns weren’t so easy. The ‘Fight’ option had the advantage of Sonia Gutierrez’s backing, but it was also likely to get strung out in legal wrangling. And there was something alarming about Gutierrez, which, despite her reputation, made him reluctant to risk both the case and his career on an alliance with her.

  Two roads left to go down. He could try to persuade Klinsman or his puppetmasters to change their minds. He could carry on with the investigation in secret. He thought about this for a moment and decided that these two roads weren’t mutually exclusive. A path from one led to the other. He checked the clock on his nightstand. It was a little after 4 a.m. In another four hours Klinsman would be at his desk. Until then he’d try to catch a little shut-eye.

  He woke to spokes of sunlight spilling out across the bed. Rising, he headed for the shower again, then dressed and fed his lemmings. He went to the kitchenette and made himself coffee. Then he dialled Klinsman’s voicemail and left a message for him to call. Going back into the kitchen to refill his mug he told himself he really should be eating more. These last few days he’d been pretty much existing on coffee and cigarettes, with the odd pack of ramen noodles and anything Edie happened to have prepared. Bachelor habits. He went towards the refrigerator then remembered the walrus head he’d cleared away yesterday evening and decided, what the hell, breakfast could wait. Returning to his desk with his coffee, he sat down and checked his emails. After an hour it came to him that Klinsman wasn’t going to return his call, so he crossed the room, dialled the switchboard from Stevie Killik’s desk and told the operator his name was ‘Doctor Sanger’ and he needed to speak urgently to Colonel Klinsman on a family matter.

  Klinsman picked up on the second ring, answering in his usual abrupt manner, but this time there was a hint of anxiety in his tone.

  ‘Good morning, colonel,’ Derek said.

  There was a pause. ‘Was that really necessary, sergeant?’

  ‘You could try returning my calls.’ Derek sounded less modulated than he’d hoped. ‘Then it wouldn’t have been.’

  Klinsman cleared his throat. ‘I really don’t have anything to say. This isn’t my decision.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It comes right from the top.’

  ‘You planning on arresting Namagoose and Saxby?’

  Klinsman went quiet.

  ‘You really need to give me something here. For the family’s sake.’

  Klinsman already had that one covered. ‘We’ll deal with the family.’

  Derek pulled the handset from his ear and stared at it a moment, the bile in his belly bubbling up. He swallowed it down. Did Klinsman really think he was going to walk away from this? That he was just going to tramp on the Ellesmere Island Police? He took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m not sure you and whoever it is you take your orders from understand how it is up here, colonel.’ He’d rehearsed his lines and he had nothing to lose in saying them. ‘So let me tell you. You remove the case from local jurisdiction it’s gonna be interpreted as qalunaat interference. Go down that route and you can forget cooperation from the family. Nobody in the Inuit community is gonna give you the time of day.’ He felt strong and purposeful, absolutely confident of being in the right. ‘You put us up here, Klinsman, you and your people, and now you’re gonna have to deal with us.’

  Klinsman coughed. ‘What you’re not hearing, sergeant, is that this decision has nothing to do with me. The only decision I’m directly responsible for is banning Camp Nanook personnel from making visits to Kuujuaq, so you won’t be seeing any more of us – how do you say, unataqti, is it? – around town. I can assure you that none of this is any reflection on your police work. If you come up with some fresh information about the death of Martha Salliaq I’ll be glad to pass it on to the relevant parties, but understand this: the case is no longer in your jurisdiction and the military authorities won’t look kindly on you continuing to investigate it.’

  Derek’s heart sank. He’d thrown down his flush only to discover the opposition was holding aces.

  ‘At least have the courtesy to tell me if you intend to go ahead with the clean-up at Glacier Ridge,’ he said. A moment ago he’d been sure of himself but he hated how he sounded now: keening, almost desperate.

  ‘It was you who insisted on us postponing it, if you recall. I’ve already told Ms Gutierrez, I don’t have any more information on that.’ Klinsman spoke with an air of finality.

  For a while after the call Derek sat in his chair smarting. He hadn’t just lost the battle, he’d been nuked. He lit a cigarette. The smoke curling into his lungs made him feel a little better. He thought back to his training all those years ago in Yellowknife. He’d been an excellent student, a good rookie cop. Then somewhere along the line he’d lost his moral courage. How that had happened he still had no idea. He’d only become aware of it last year, investigating the deaths of the qalunaat hunter and Edie Kiglatuk’s stepson, Joe Inukpuk. The successful prosecution of that case had given him back his self-respect. He’d felt renewed. As though he’d rediscovered his purpose in life. That moral compass of his once again found its true north. And he wasn’t about to lose it this time.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Tom Silliq stepped inside and looked nervously about the room.

  Derek felt his new heroic mood shrink back a little. ‘What brings you here, Tom?’

  Silliq shifted his weight. His face looked troubled. ‘See, here’s what it is. There weren’t no unataqti in the bar last night, nor in the Shack neither.’

  ‘A lot of people in this town’ll happy about that,’ Derek said.

  ‘Well, I ain’t one of ’em.’ Silliq lifted up his baseball cap, scratched underneath, then replaced it. ‘Thought as you’d know something about it is all.’

  Derek explained that Camp Nanook was on lockdown until the Martha Salliaq case had been resolved. So here he was once more, he thought, sweating the small stuff for folk who laughed at him behind his back and called him the Lemming Police.

  ‘Ah,’ said Tom. ‘Well, that answers it.’ He took off his hat again and turned it around in his hands. ‘The other thing don’t matter any more then.’

  ‘Well good,’ Derek said. He waited for Silliq to show some signs of leaving and when he didn’t he said, ‘Was there something else?’

  Silliq kept staring at his hands. ‘Nothing to me, but my wife will go crazy I don’t mention it. The Arab boy works for her.’ He watched Derek trying to summon the man to mind.

  ‘The meteorologist?’

  ‘Right, that fella. He didn’t show up for his last two shifts. Says he had a headache of some kind on Saturday, then he just stops showing up. I been round his house and there’s no one there.’

  ‘Maybe he got sick of the job,’ Derek said. He was struggling to sound interested. Last thing he needed was this kind of distraction. ‘You go talk to any of his friends?’

  ‘Fella don’t have no friends.’ Silliq rubbed his head. ‘He don’t drink neither. One of the reasons Susie took him on. Muslim.’ He pronounced the word ‘Moose-leem’ as though it was some elk-like property.

 
Derek said he would look into it and meantime, if Silliq heard anything, to let him know. All of which meant he had no intention of doing anything. As he watched Silliq lumber towards the door he felt an overwhelming sense of loathing. For the situation. For himself. It gave him the urge to thump something.

  The table came to hand.

  His index finger landed on something sharp. Blood began to spiral down. He reckoned he deserved it. He sat back in his chair, welcoming the pain, noticing as he did so that his notebook was lying on the floor. It must have fallen off when he banged the table. As he picked it up, his eyes lit upon the right-hand column he’d written a few hours before. He stared at it awhile, his focus moving in and out on the word ‘Secret’, unable to remove his gaze. He felt the pain in his shoulder and arm drain away, as though some blockage had finally dislodged itself. There it was, his decision, staring him in the face. The answer to all the doubt, the humiliation and self-loathing. There was no crossroads. There never had been. There was only one direction of travel and that was forward. He would carry on investigating the Martha Salliaq murder until he had the perpetrator or perpetrators on the hook. Even if that meant defying Klinsman and exposing whatever the department was trying to keep from becoming public. Even if it meant becoming a whistleblower, with all the dangers that would accrue. He had to do it. For Martha’s sake and for his own, he had to keep going until he’d found the truth. Feeling lighter than he had in days, he tore the page from his notebook, screwed it up and threw it in the bin.

  The door swung open again. This time it was Edie. Just as she opened her mouth to say something the phone rang. ‘You mind?’ he said, lifting his finger, which was bleeding more profusely now. ‘I should go put this under some water.’

  When he came back out to the office, she was just finishing.

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Sammy. It’s my fault, D. I sneaked in while you were having your shower and left a message for him to call.’

  Derek sucked his teeth.

  ‘I know, I know, it’s fucked up.’ She gestured to his finger. ‘You hurt yourself?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  She held up a plastic bag. ‘I brought seal liver so how’s about we have breakfast? Then you can disapprove of me on a full stomach.’

  • • •

  A while later she came out of the kitchen carrying two plates of fried meat. As they were eating, he outlined his plan to carry on with the investigation. She seemed glad at his decision.

  ‘You realize there’s a risk here, though, Edie,’ he went on. ‘We’re not dealing with a bunch of kids in the playground.’

  ‘You’re not dealing with a lemming right here either,’ she said. ‘D, I can handle myself.’

  She was right. He could be a condescending asshole sometimes. They sat for a while, feeling the atmosphere between them thicken. He hoped she was gearing herself up to tell him whatever it was she’d been keeping from him.

  ‘I went over to Chip Muloon’s place last night,’ she said finally.

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled to himself. Here it was.

  ‘He already knew about the Defence Department taking back Glacier Ridge.’

  Derek felt himself contract. ‘Town gossip,’ he said, unimpressed.

  ‘I don’t think so. I think Klinsman told him before us.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ He felt himself quicken. Maybe this was something after all.

  ‘Sam Oolik saw them together.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘I think Chip’s got something to do with the military.’

  Derek frowned. It seemed unlikely. He’d seen Muloon’s credentials. The man worked for the University of Calgary.

  Edie went on. ‘All that time me and Chip spent together, he never once mentioned the university. No colleagues, no department, nothing.’

  Derek closed his eyes. When he opened them, the bolder, better version of himself stepped forward.

  ‘Let’s check it out,’ he said.

  23

  After yesterday’s five-minute phone call with a junior counsel at the Defence Department confirming that the clean-up at Glacier Ridge had been postponed indefinitely, Sonia Gutierrez had spent most of the night rereading the land claims papers and her head was spinning. The papers, with their endless delicately negotiated clauses, subclauses and technical addenda, served as a reminder of just how hard she’d worked, as well as how much she’d sacrificed to get the agreement in the first place. The indignation of yesterday had given way to a more considered determination. Somewhere in the papers she was confident there would be some grounds for an appeal against the department’s decision. By appealing she hoped to be able to expose whatever it was that the department was trying to hide. Enter by stealth through the back door then open the whole thing wide. In any case, if any formal move were to have real traction it would have to be based on a careful weighing of the legal position rather than some knee-jerk sense of injustice or outrage.

  Bundling herself up in her robe, she padded down the stairs to the guest kitchen and switched on the coffee drip, intending to get herself showered and dressed before going to see the Salliaqs, who were now back in their own house. Charlie needed to hear this latest development along with her reassurances that she was doing everything in her power to right the situation. That no one at Camp Nanook or in the Defence Department had thought to contact her directly so that she could forewarn Charlie was an affront to them both. Her client was a difficult man but he’d had a tough life and beneath all the bluster there lurked a kind, if wary, heart. It was more than enough that his daughter had been murdered. To lose the land claim he’d worked so hard and fought so long for was a cruelty too far.

  She sprayed herself with insect repellent and walked out to her ATV, zipped herself inside its reassuring plastic cover and sparked up the engine. On the way over, she rehearsed her spiel. The message she wanted to get across was that, however it seemed, the people of Kuujuaq were not powerless against the Defence Department’s decision. She would tell Charlie that she had demanded an explanation, along with reassurances that the investigation into Martha Salliaq’s death would continue under military police jurisdiction and for an undertaking that the planned decontamination works would start this season and the land returned to Inuit control once they were complete next year. She wouldn’t mention her deeper fears of a cover-up until she had something more concrete to offer. And she certainly wouldn’t bring up the tricky business of her bank balance. What the Salliaqs needed right now was reassurance and encouragement.

  Charlie was on the couch in the living room. He struggled to get up when she came in. Alice had gone back to bed, he said, and Lizzie was at Markoosie’s house. The old man was to all intents and purposes alone.

  She made tea, sat down beside him and began. He listened to her as he almost always did, respectfully and without interrupting.

  ‘This is bad news. I don’t think much of that mixed-dough police but I think even less of the unataqti,’ he said.

  Her heart went out to him. His face looked like an old tarpaulin left out in a storm. She patted his hand.

  ‘This is just a setback. We’ve got over enough of those in the past. The evidence against Namagoose and Saxby is overwhelming. While we’re waiting for the legal stuff to go through we can continue to put the pressure on, publicize the case some more.’

  She watched his face cloud over, the skin on his cheeks the colour of rotten ice. Some thought moved across it. He looked very sick.

  ‘The clean-up can wait,’ he said. ‘I want my daughter’s killer found.’

  ‘It’s two sides of the same coin,’ she pressed, regretting the phrase the moment it came out of her mouth. Using the language of money to an Inuk was like speaking in tongues to an atheist.

  He looked at her as though she’d brought in a bad smell.

  Then h
e waved his hands and grunted to signal that he was no longer willing to listen.

  • • •

  She left the house feeling disappointed with herself. She’d failed to get Charlie to understand that the clean-up and the search for Martha’s killer were linked. But seeing him in such a fragile physical state only made her more determined to carry on. It occurred to her that she hadn’t yet checked for new information in the local archives at the town hall. This was where she went now.

  The broad historical facts of the Distant Early Warning line had etched themselves in her mind over the years. The line, which wasn’t actually a line but rather a series of overlapping radar stations, was one of the outstanding initiatives of Cold War politics. Built in the late fifties, the DEW consisted of a string of sixty-three stations stretching nearly ten thousand kilometres across Arctic North America from Alaska in the west to Baffin Island in the east. Three types of facility had been built, the largest of which, the main stations, were like small cities, each with its own electricity, water, heat, an airstrip, and housing and recreation areas. Then there were mid-level, intermediate stations and small, unmanned ‘gap filler’ stations. Though initially funded by the United States, the sites flew both the Canadian and US flags until they were deactivated and sole jurisdiction given to the Canadian government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was partly what had delayed the land claim. It was only after the station at Glacier Ridge had devolved fully into Canadian government hands that the Defence Department had been free to engage in discussions on returning the site back to the Inuit.

  It was public knowledge that the stations had produced large amounts of hazardous waste. In 1996 the Canadian and US governments came to an agreement, with the United States contributing $100 million to the estimated $600 million clean-up effort. This was why, when Sonia had pushed for an independent organization to run the decontamination programme, the Department of Defence had insisted on contracting the work to Defence Construction Canada with Environment Canada supervising. What she didn’t know then was that they would be working from Defence Department reports.