Whiskey Creek

by Dave Hugelschaffer

  “What?”

  “The party at the cabin,” MacFarlane says, as though they had already discussed this.

  “I don’t know what party you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, you know,” he says, like she’s playing an amusing game.

  Collette tilts her head. “I’d think if I was at a party I’d remember it.”

  “Yeah, you’d think so,” MacFarlane says softly. “But sometimes people don’t. I know that’s happened to me on occasion. Pretty embarrassing.” He leans forward and I get a good view of his receding hairline. When he sits back there’s something on the table beside Collette’s elbow. It’s the glass tumbler I found in the ditch, in a clear plastic evidence bag. “But you were there, Collette,” he says. “At Rufus Hallendry’s cabin. Your fingerprints are on this glass.”

  Collette’s expression freezes as she looks down at the tumbler. MacFarlane says: “You know who else’s fingerprints are on this glass?”

  Collette swallows, shakes her head.

  “Bernice Mercredi’s fingerprints. Isn’t that interesting?”

  There’s a long silence. Emotions struggle subtly in the muscles of her face as Collette tries to keep her expression neutral. I wonder where MacFarlane got her prints for comparison, or if he’s just testing her. Her chin begins to quiver and she reaches up, covers her face with her hands, lets out a single stifled sob.

  “Just tell me what happened,” MacFarlane says gently.

  “No,” she says through her hands, voice choked. “It’s too embarrassing.”

  “What’s so embarrassing? Getting drunk and not remembering?”

  “No.” Collette shakes her head, hands still covering her face. MacFarlane waits. After a few moments, Collette drops her hands. “I didn’t know he would do that,” she says, voice trembling.

  The back of MacFarlane’s head shows as he leans forward. “Who did what?”

  Collette stares at the floor, teary and vacant.

  “Who did what?” MacFarlane says, harsher.

  “Raped us,” she shouts suddenly. “He raped us, okay.”

  I recoil at the intensity of her response. Collette’s hands are over her face again and she’s sobbing uncontrollably. I think MacFarlane will go to her, comfort her — I want to go to her — but he sits back and waits until the storm subsides. When she’s done and drops her hands, he offers her a tissue.

  “You okay?”

  She takes the tissue. “How can I be okay?”

  “Tell me what happened, Collette.”

  It takes her a moment to collect herself, then she sniffs, stares at the floor, talking quietly.

  “We were drinking at the Trapline, Bernie and me, and he was there.”

  “Rufus Hallendry?”

  “Yeah. We were all having a pretty good time, then Bernie starts to get stupid sad, like she does sometimes when she’s had a lot to drink, and we decide to call it a night. We’re walking home when he pulls up beside us, offers us a ride. We know the guy, right, so we say sure. Then Bernie says she’s feeling better and we should go back to the bar. He says why not go make a fire, have a bush party, watch the stars. He’s got off-sales. Sounds like a cool idea. When we get to his cabin there’s no one else there. They’re coming, he says. We go inside and he starts his stove and we do a few hot knives.”

  “You were smoking hash?”

  “Just a few knives, on the stove, you know. Heat the tip, suck it up through a toilet paper tube. We started to get high and he poured us drinks. Then —”

  Collette stops, her expression working, eyebrows bunching.

  “Hey, it’s all right,” says MacFarlane. “Just get it out.”

  “No one else came,” she says quietly.

  “He raped both of you?”

  “Bernie first, then me. Said he’d kill us if we said no.”

  MacFarlane gives her a minute. “What did you do after?”

  “You kidding? When he was drunk enough, we ran out of there.”

  “Was the stove open when you left?”

  Collette tilts her head, gives MacFarlane a puzzled look. “You shitting me? Guy raped us and you’re asking if I took the time to notice if the stove door was open when I ran outside? Get real. Next you’re gonna ask if we took the time to burn down the cabin.”

  “Did you?”

  “As if. Not a bad idea, really, but all we had in mind was to get the hell out there.”

  “Right,” MacFarlane says absently. Collette watches him, intent.

  “So, after you left the cabin, what happened next?”

  “Like I said, we got the hell out of there. Went home.”

  “Walked? Drove? Took the train?”

  “Walked, obviously.”

  “That’s a long way from town. You walk the whole way?”

  Collette slumps back in her chair. “Mostly. We hitched at the highway.”

  “Who picked you up?”

  “My uncle.”

  “And his name would be?”

  “Rodney Whiteknife. Everyone calls him Cork.”

  There’s a lull as MacFarlane gives Collette time to calm down. My mind is racing. Collette Whiteknife and Bernice Mercredi were raped at Hallendry’s cabin. It fits the evidence. The belt buckle indicating Hallendry was naked from the waist down. The stove going and open to heat up the knives. The drinking glasses. The door left open as the two girls fled.

  “Was Mr. Hallendry conscious when you left?”

  Collette looks up at the question, eyes hard. “He was stumbling around.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone else on your way out?” She shakes her head.

  “What did you two do after your uncle picked you up?”

  “Nothing. We went home.”

  “Did you tell him what happened?”

  She frowns, stares at the floor. MacFarlane leans forward.

  “This is very important. Did you tell anyone what happened at the cabin?”

  She sighs heavily, sits up straighter, seems to collect herself. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re not a girl. You’re not Native. You don’t live up here. We don’t talk about stuff like that. We just try to forget it. There’s nothing that can be done.”

  MacFarlane’s voice drops, gentle but firm. “There are things that can be done, Collette — things that need to be done — but we’ll talk about that later. Do you know Porter Cassel?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “He’s a nice guy. We were consensual.”

  I grimace as though someone kicked me in the gut.

  “What?” says MacFarlane.

  Collette looks a bit shy. “When we did it, we were consensual.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Did you have sex with Mr. Cassel?”

  Collette nods. I feel faint. MacFarlane’s face suddenly fills the monitor, glaring at me. Seconds later, he’s in the room, glaring at me. “You slept with her?” he says, voice controlled but unmistakably furious. “Our key witness — our only witness — and you slept with her?”

  I nod, mute, unable to offer a defence. MacFarlane turns away from me, rubs his thinning hair furiously for a moment. When he turns to face me his hair is wild. He points to the door.

  “Get out of my sight, Cassel.”

  “I didn’t know —”

  “Get out of my sight. And out of my investigation.”

  10

  •

  THE NEXT MORNING I’m not terribly motivated to get out of bed. Despite a late-night cup of Dr. Cho’s happy tea I did not sleep well, disturbed by thoughts of Collette Whiteknife and of burned and drowned bodies. Of young women lured to a remote cabin and raped. And of my guilt at having strayed. When I tried to block out these thoughts, images surfaced like long-submerged driftwood in the river of my imagination, only to be caught in an eddy and circle endlessly. MacFarlane pointing to the door, a vein bulging in his temple. Luke Middel with a burned dog in his arms. Simon Cardinal grinning at me in the bar in Fort McMurray. By the time the firs
t weak rays of light seep into the room, the bed sheets are a tangled sweaty mess. Irritated and angry, I toss the sheets aside and struggle free, sit on the edge of my bed, nauseous and shaking.

  Dr. Cho’s guttural voice haunts me: You are sick, Mr. Cassel.

  I shake off the thought, stumble into the shower. When I emerge it’s still too early for anyone to be up. In the empty cook shack, I brew a strong cup of Dr. Cho’s tea. It tastes how a mixture of battery acid, urine, and tree bark might taste, causing my throat to pucker, but calm soon settles over me and my eyelids begin to droop. I’m in danger of falling asleep when I hear boots on the wooden landing outside and the door bangs open. It’s young Constable Markham, his uniform exceptionally crisp this morning.

  “Cassel — they want you in town.”

  I picture MacFarlane pointing at the door. “What for?”

  “Ident wants you to show them where you found the body.”

  I groan, not looking forward to what could only be a tense and awkward day, tell Markham I’ll be right there. I quickly feed the dog, check his burns, which seem to be healing well with no sign of infection. He licks my hands. Although he causes my allergies to flare up I’m loathe to leave him this morning — he seems to be the only companion that isn’t judging me. I scruff him behind the ears, tell him I’ll be back later, and follow Markham to the government dock, where Dugan, MacFarlane and Waldren are waiting. Only Dugan gives me a nod. We step aboard the RCMP boat, a newer deep V-hull model, cram together among Dugan’s cases of crime scene gear. Waldren takes the helm, guides us out of the harbour and brings the boat up to speed.

  It’s too noisy for conversation, a blessing this morning, and I watch the shoreline bob past as we cut through the waves. We travel downriver for a half hour before I spot the sweeper. The gap I’ve cut through the branches looks like a missing tooth. Dugan signals Waldren to slow while he takes a series of pictures. Then he runs video as we approach the sweeper, records my narrative as I describe how I freed the snagged body and pulled it into my boat. Dugan takes a sample of river water for diatom comparison with water found in Bernice Mercredi’s lungs. This will determine if she drowned in the river or somewhere else. We do a slow cruise to the weir, then return to the sweeper. Dugan and MacFarlane go ashore on opposite sides of the river, where they struggle through the brush for a few hundred yards. When we retrieve them upstream they’re both sweating and scratched. Dugan has twigs caught in his wispy white hair.

  “Nothing,” he says, wiping his brow. “You find anything?”

  MacFarlane shakes his head. “She could have gone in anywhere.”

  “What about that cabin you mentioned?”

  I direct them along a narrower tributary channel to the cabin. We cruise slowly past the spot on the bank where I found the other boat, look for any visible evidence. Nothing. After securing our boat, Dugan examines the river bank, looking for boot prints, but the vegetation is too dense. We work our way in a pattern across the clearing in front of the cabin. I find an old tobacco can, overgrown with moss. MacFarlane finds a rusted muskrat trap. Despite my hopes to the contrary, the cabin yields even less. I was certain there would be some evidence of recent occupation, but as I stand inside I’m puzzled. A rusted and collapsing stove is clearly not safe for use. A pole bunk has no mattress. A shelf is lined with dusty soup and tobacco cans, filled with nails and bits of debris. The smell is funky and organic, like mushrooms and wood rot. Nothing here is even remotely recent. This is definitely not a hidden love nest. I join MacFarlane, Waldren and Dugan in the grassy clearing.

  “I don’t know, Cassel,” says Waldren.

  “Tell me the story again,” says MacFarlane.

  “Like I said before, I talked to Collette Whiteknife about Bernice Mercredi. The two of them were supposed to be pretty tight. She told me Bernice was secretly seeing some older guy, married by the sound of it but she didn’t know who, and she thought they might go to this cabin to do their thing. I grabbed the forestry boat and came out to talk to Bernice about why she left the fire. There was a boat here when I arrived, but I didn’t see anyone. I went to the cabin and was standing just inside the door when I was hit.”

  “And you woke up draped over a moose carcass.”

  “Yes.”

  “In a place you can’t find.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea who hit you?”

  “No.”

  There’s an uncomfortable silence. MacFarlane scuffs bare a spot on the ground with his boot, frowning, then looks at me. “Doesn’t that seem a bit improbable?”

  “I’m getting the impression you guys don’t believe me.”

  “You’re not the most reliable source, Cassel.”

  “Why would she send you out here?” says Waldren. “What’s in it for her?”

  “I don’t know, but she must have had a reason. What did she tell you?” “She claims she never told you to come out here.”

  “What?”

  “Said you asked her about Mercredi, but she hadn’t heard from her in a few days.”

  “That’s it? She never mentioned the affair Mercredi was supposed to be having?”

  MacFarlane shakes his head.

  I look at the Mounties. “There is something really wrong here.”

  “No shit,” says Waldren. “Hey, let me tell you a story. Forest Ranger decides he’s going to investigate a series of apparently unrelated deaths and follows a lead out to an old cabin by the river. But this Forest Ranger is a bit careless and he forgets to tie up his boat properly, so it floats away. He’s so embarrassed he makes up some cock and bull story to cover his ass.”

  “I’m not a Forest Ranger.”

  Waldren raises his hands expressively. “I’m just being hypothetical here.”

  “This is bullshit,” I say, fuming, heat prickling across my back.

  “Settle down,” says MacFarlane. “We’re all flying blind here. So far we’ve got a dead guy burned in his cabin, with no presentable evidence of foul play. A girl who claims she was raped, which cannot be substantiated, and a drowned girl who was prone to depression.”

  “They must have something in common,” I say.

  “Yeah,” says MacFarlane. “You.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Look Cassel.” MacFarlane places a hand on my shoulder, perhaps in an effort to calm me. It isn’t working. “The only common element so far is that you seem to somehow be in the middle of everything. You claim to find evidence we missed. You arrive first at the scene. You find the body.”

  Waldren chimes in: “You shack up with our only lead.”

  “About that,” says MacFarlane. “What is your relationship to the Whiteknife girl?”

  “There is no relationship. I met her at the bar. We went to a party together. I had too much too drink. It was a complete surprise to me that she might be involved.”

  “Is that a problem of yours? The drinking?”

  “A long time ago. It’s under control.”

  Waldren snorts. “Doesn’t look that way to me.”

  He’s right. I want to explain that I haven’t been myself lately, but it’s hard to define and would only sound like a lame excuse. The only reason I was at the bar, both here and in Fort McMurray, was to further my investigation, but I doubt that will impress them. And the only evidence of the incident at the moose carcass — my reeking clothes — was lost to the washing machine at the ia base. My credibility is at an all-time low.

  “Look,” says MacFarlane, using the same ingratiating tone he used on Collette Whiteknife. “I know you’re just trying to help us out here, but you have to see it from our side, Porter. We need to run a tight investigation and so far you haven’t exactly been an asset in that department. What I need you to do is just take a break, let us do our jobs here.”

  “Take a break. What does that mean? What am I supposed to do?”

  “If we need you, we’ll let you know.”

  IT’S MID-AFTERNOON by
the time the RCMP boat docks in Fort Chipewyan. As we disembark, Dugan handing cases of equipment to Waldren on the dock, it’s clear that a line has been drawn between my investigation and the RCMP. In fact, I’m not sure I still have an investigation and I walk away from the dock without further discussion, avoid the ranger station, have a hamburger at the local café. Ponder my future in Fort Chipewyan. The waitress is a young Native woman, with a nasty scar on her cheek, but a nice smile. I think of Collette Whiteknife — she seems to be ground zero for my recent credibility problems.

  I need to talk to her.

  I pay for my burger, leave a generous tip for the friendly waitress, drive to Cork’s house, park along what might be considered the curb. The front yard is overgrown with weeds, amongst which an immense stump squats. Towels are hung in windows in place of drapes. Unattended garbage has collected along with an impressive pile of bottles near the side door. I wonder what life event caused Collette to live with her uncle. When I rap on the door it’s Cork who answers.

  He grins when he sees me. “Fire Guy. You wanna come in for a beer?”

  “I was just looking for Collette.”

  “She went camping. Williams Point, across the lake.”

  “When will she be back?”

  He shrugs. “Coupla days — maybe a week.”

  “Maybe I’ll have that brew,” I say, thinking it’s odd that Collette would go camping right after her interview with the RCMP. She’s the closest thing they have to a lead and I expected the RCMP would have asked her to stick around as they’re bound to have more questions. I have a few questions of my own. I follow Cork inside, where he leads me to the fridge, hands me a can of beer. His kitchen table is covered with mechanical parts from what looks like a boat motor. The pungent smell of gasoline fills the house. He lumbers into the adjacent living room, where he flops down into a broken recliner. I look around, at the immense TV, muted and turned to a fishing show, take a seat on the sagging brown couch — the same place I sat on that fateful night.