Purple Palette for Murder

by R. J. Harlick

  “You need sleep. Besides, I’m old man. I can wait. Shelagh say you need some food in your stomach.” He passed me a thermos mug of still-warm coffee, a large piece of bannock, and a container of fried fish, along with a fork.

  “Is this the fish you caught this morning?”

  “Was good morning. We caught two whitefish and an inconnu.”

  I sampled some fish. “Delicious. Please thank Shelagh for me. Is she your wife?”

  “Nope, Mary died fifteen years ago. Shelagh’s my son’s wife.” He put his foot on the gas and off we zoomed, barely missing a car that had turned onto the road.

  “Do you know Gloria?” I asked between bites of bannock.

  “You talking about Claire’s daughter?”

  “I guess. I left her sleeping in the apartment. She says she’s from Digadeh.”

  “Yup. Claire and Charmaine were sisters.”

  “So she’s Teht’aa’s cousin.”

  “Yup. Teht’aa looks out for her. She’s had a rough go. Better she stay in Digadeh, but she don’t want to.”

  “Is that where you live?”

  “Yup. These days. I used to live in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Met Eric in Medicine Hat when working on the pipeline. When old, better to live in place where you come from.” He honked the horn and waved at a man driving a shiny red pickup passing us in the opposite direction.

  “That’s George. He from Digadeh too. Ice road closed. He have to keep his fancy new truck in Yellowknife now.” He chuckled.

  “Ice road?”

  “Yah. In winter, when river and lake ice real thick, they make a road to communities that don’t have no highway going to it. It goes to diamond mines too. Plane only way to get there now. And it don’t take trucks.” He chortled as he swerved around a stopped car.

  “Are you originally from Digadeh?”

  “Digadeh only a summer camp when I was born. I’m seventy-five. Not bad for an old man, eh?” He thumped his chest. “Heart like boy.” He grinned. “When I a boy, no one live in Digadeh all the time. We live on the land, move from camp to camp. We follow the caribou. No caribou now. They make Digadeh permanent in 1970s, when I live in Alberta. They build a store, church, and houses for the families. A lot easier living in a permanent house than setting up camp, eh? But not all families do this. Not my sister.”

  He braked to a stop to allow two young boys to cross the road.

  “I was a boy, like him.” He pointed to the smaller child clutching the hand of the older one. The boy couldn’t be older than six or seven. “RCMP come to our camp and take me and my brother and sister away. It was many years before I come back here.”

  “What kept you away?”

  “Saint Anne’s. There ten years.”

  “Is that a school?”

  “Yup, residential school run by nuns and priests.” He spat. “They don’t let us leave.”

  I cringed at the term “residential school,” schools that were set up by the government to remove the “Indian” from these poor children. Only now, 150 years after the first such schools were established and twenty years after the last of them was closed, were we learning through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the government about the life-altering damage they had inflicted on generations of children and their families.

  “Not even for summer holidays?” I asked.

  “They afraid we never come back.” He chuckled. “They right. My brother and me escape two times. But we got lost. They found us and send us back. When school finish, Larry and I don’t go home. No reason to. Our parents dead.” He screeched to a halt at a light turning red.

  “You know Eric’s at Digadeh,” he said.

  “I know. Tell me, is the victim’s name Frank?”

  “Yup. A bad ’un. Had it coming.”

  “Was Frank Teht’aa’s boyfriend?”

  “Don’t know. They cousins.”

  “How could he be her boyfriend, then?”

  “Not real cousins. Connie adopted Frank. She’s my sister Florence’s girl.”

  “What do you know about Hans Walther?”

  “The prospector? Friend of Teht’aa too. Frank had problems with women. She shoulda stay away from him.”

  “Did Frank assault Teht’aa?”

  “Eric say Frank did it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Told me.”

  “When did you see Eric?”

  “At the hospital two days ago. He say he go to Digadeh to see Frank. I told him don’t go, but he stubborn fool. Too angry to listen.”

  Hours later, Frank was dead and Eric was arrested for his murder.

  Like his lawyer said, an open and shut case.

  Damn.

  TEN

  Using Teht’aa as his excuse, Uncle Joe left me at the entrance to the police station in the downtown core. When I brought up the earliness of the hour, he sheepishly admitted he was allergic to cops and would wait in the hospital lobby until he was allowed into ICU. I soon discovered he’d dropped me off at the wrong door. It turned out the building housed both the RCMP divisional headquarters for all of the Northwest Territories and the detachment for Yellowknife. I found myself being squired through a labyrinth of anonymous halls until I was left at the reception counter for the detachment.

  Sergeant Ryan was about Teht’aa’s age, with short-cropped white-blond hair and the kind of athletic build that had me trying to suck in my stomach. After meeting me at the front reception, she led me along a narrow hall to a door that opened onto a windowless room, bare but for two straight-backed chairs and a metal table.

  “We can talk in here.” The police officer swung the door wider. “We prefer to meet with relatives in friendlier surroundings. I was intending to meet you at your hotel. I guess you didn’t get my message.”

  I slipped Eric’s cell from my purse and noticed the flashing icon. “Sorry, I didn’t check.”

  She pulled out the nearest chair for me and brought the other around to the same side of the table. She dropped the file folder she’d been carrying onto the table and sat down. “I’m so sorry about your daughter. Is she still in a coma?”

  “Actually she’s my stepdaughter, my husband’s daughter, but you probably know that.”

  She acknowledged with a curt nod.

  “The doctor is stopping the sedation, so she should wake up sometime today.”

  “Good, we need to talk to her.”

  I noticed a camera peering down at us from high up on the opposite wall. “Are we being recorded?”

  “Not unless you give me a reason.” Her thin lips barely cracked a smile in her otherwise impassive face. “I’m afraid our detachment is overcrowded, so this interview room is the only private room available. By husband, you mean Eric Odjik.”

  I nodded.

  “You know he’s been arrested for murder.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t do it. He’d never kill anyone.”

  She gave me a polite shrug, as if she’d heard this many times before, and asked, “How can I help you?”

  “I’d like to know more about Teht’aa’s assault. I gather the man murdered at Digadeh was the man responsible.”

  “All I can say is that we are following up on various leads.”

  “So you haven’t stopped your investigation?”

  “No.”

  Good. If the murder victim had nothing to do with Teht’aa’s injuries, there went Eric’s motive. Still, Eric had told Uncle Joe that Frank had done it. But I wasn’t about to mention this to the sergeant.

  Instead I said, “Do you have a motive yet for the attack?”

  “It was a sexual assault. The motive is pretty straight forward.”

  “Does that mean Teht’aa was … ah … raped?” I could barely get the word out as I tried to suppress the rush of panic it rel
eased. “I … ah … thought she’d just been beaten.”

  “Unfortunately not.”

  “But she has a fractured skull, a broken arm, and other injuries not usually associated with … ah … rape.”

  “She likely put up a good fight and got someone good and mad at her.”

  “Yeah, Teht’aa’s not exactly a shrinking violet. Do you think she knew the man?”

  “As I said, we are following all leads. Let’s just say most of the sexual assault cases we investigate are domestic.”

  “So that means a boyfriend or husband?”

  “Or family member. What can you tell me about the men in her life?”

  “I met a man yesterday who said he was her boyfriend. Hans Walther is his name.”

  “Tell me about him.” She extracted a notebook from her shirt pocket.

  I told her the little I’d learned and ended by saying, “It might be worthwhile checking out his alibi. It’s possible he made a brief visit to town and returned to the bush after he assaulted Teht’aa.”

  “Any other men?”

  If she didn’t already know about Frank, I wasn’t going to tell her. “Not that I know of.”

  “Do you know if she frequents any of the bars in town?”

  “Sorry, I know next to nothing about her social life here, but I would be surprised if she spent much time in bars. She was sick and tired of the bar scene. The only men she ever met in bars were after one thing, and it wasn’t her brain.”

  “I’ll second that.” This time Sergeant Ryan’s smile added more life to her face. “What about female friends?”

  “She’s mentioned someone by the name of Sylvia several times. They hike together. She worked with her at APTN. Sorry I don’t have a last name for you.”

  “It should be easy enough to get. The next is a rather delicate question, but it needs to be asked. Do you know if she is into rough sex?”

  “You mean like bondage and stuff like that?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought back to that terrible time a couple of years ago when Eric almost died and shuddered. “No, she’d never get involved in anything like that.”

  “What about prostitution?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. She had a good-paying job and is about to start a new one at CBC. Why are you asking these questions?”

  “Just covering all angles. You probably don’t know that she was found in an alley behind the Gold Range Motel, known for its hourly rates.”

  “Oh. Is it close to her apartment in Old Town?”

  “Actually, it’s only a few blocks from here. If Yellowknife were said to have a rough area, this would be it. Do you know if she’s still involved in drugs? I see she pleaded guilty to possession seven years ago but didn’t serve time.”

  This was news to me. The only charges I knew about were dropped when she agreed to attend a healing circle. “As far as I’m aware she has been drug-free for the last few years.”

  “What about alcohol?”

  “No more than most people. Can you tell me anything about how she was found and when?”

  “One of the homeless women who hang out in the alley behind the motel found her and notified the motel’s manager. The call came in at 2:33 a.m., the morning of the sixteenth. We’re not certain when the actual assault occurred, but we know it was after 9:45 p.m. the previous night, when she was seen leaving her apartment.” She opened the folder and brought out a sheet of paper. “It says here that she’s lived in Yellowknife two years.”

  “It’s probably closer to twenty months. APTN sent her here to handle its NWT news coverage. Before that she was living and working for APTN in Ottawa, and prior to that her father’s house on the Migiskan Reserve in Quebec.”

  “I’ve seen her on TV. She’s certainly a beautiful woman. I hope her injuries don’t put an end to her career.”

  “I hope so, too, but that’s a worry for the future. Right now the most important thing is for her to wake up with no permanent brain damage. I imagine you know that she was born and raised in the Northwest Territories.”

  “Yes, in the Dene community of Digadeh. Apart from her father and yourself, we aren’t aware of other relatives.” She pulled out another sheet of paper. “No, that isn’t entirely correct. There’s an uncle, great-uncle by the name of Joseph Bluegoose, but we haven’t been able to locate him.”

  “He’s in Yellowknife. Staying with his son.” Sorry, Uncle Joe, but finding Teht’aa’s attacker is more important than keeping the police away from you.

  “Do you have the co-ordinates?”

  “No, but he spends most days at the hospital. There’s also a cousin in town. Her name is Gloria.”

  “Do you have contact information for her?”

  “I just left her sleeping at Teht’aa’s apartment. But that’s all I know about Teht’aa’s relatives.” If they didn’t yet know that their murder victim was also related, that was their problem. “She never talked about her childhood. Why do you need this information? The key thing is to catch the man who did this.”

  “As mentioned, most assault cases in NWT are domestic, so the first step in our investigation is to determine the men who knew her, including relatives.”

  “You should be asking people in Digadeh.”

  “We are. I have a constable following up there, but as with any small community, when it feels threatened the tendency is to close ranks and not divulge much information, particularly to the cops.” Another smile inched across her freckled face.

  “By the way, I assume you’ve checked out Teht’aa’s apartment.”

  “My partner and I did.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t clean up after your search.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was stuff strewn all over her apartment.”

  “That can’t be. We left it exactly the way we found it. While Teht’aa would never get an award for good housekeeping, it was no messier than my own place.” Another wisp of a smile.

  “The door was also unlocked.”

  “Impossible. I distinctly remember double-checking that it was locked.” The cop pushed her chair back with a grating noise that set my teeth on edge. “I’d better check it out. You come with me.”

  I glanced at my watch. “How long will it take? I have to meet someone at the airport in a couple of hours.”

  “No problem. If you don’t have wheels, I’ll drive you there.”

  I had a feeling being picked up in a cop car wouldn’t go over well with Eric’s new lawyer. “Thanks, I can take a cab.”

  ELEVEN

  This time Teht’aa’s door was firmly locked, the way I had left it. While I searched through the jumble in my purse for the key, the sergeant slipped on a pair of latex gloves and examined the outside of the metal door, concentrating on the area around the lock.

  “See anything?” I asked.

  “Nope, no sign of forced entry. Do you have the key?”

  I passed it to her. Ordering me to stay outside, she unlocked the door and stepped into the vestibule. Only when the door closed behind her did I remember.

  I hastily reopened it and called out, “Don’t forget Teht’aa’s cousin Gloria is sleeping in the back bedroom.”

  “Her last name Bluegoose?” she asked with a hint of suspicion.

  “I’ve no idea. Why do you ask?”

  “We have a warrant out for her arrest.”

  And I’d been sleeping in the bedroom across the hall from her.

  “What’s it for?”

  “She’s up on prostitution charges and hasn’t abided by the conditions of her release.”

  At least it wasn’t murder.

  The last glimpse I had of the cop before shutting the door was of her striding purposefully toward the bedrooms.

  Though the sun had begun to
heat up the day, a cold wind blowing from the lake had me trying to warm up my hands in my pockets. Feeling somewhat exposed perched on the narrow landing with its ten-metre drop to the street, I sat down on the hard-packed dirt of a flower planter. Through the railing I was surprised to see a string of people going in and out of the house across the street, until I realized it was a bed and breakfast. A tantalizing whiff of bacon and something sweet, like cinnamon buns, told me it also housed a café. Good. I wouldn’t have to rely on my own dreadful cooking.

  Beyond, the lake glistened and rippled with the wind. A red canoe was setting out from one of the houseboats. The paddler was having a challenge dealing with the waves and the wind. As much fun as it would be to live in one of those, I’m not sure I would like to be at the daily mercy of the vagaries of subarctic weather.

  My eyes followed the ribbon of the main road. It ran through the flats of Old Town, past a collection of abandoned log shacks, and up the hill to the scattered skyscrapers of Yellowknife, skyscrapers only because they towered above everything else. Far off to the left of the downtown core, I could make out a high, thin tower that didn’t appear to be an office building or an apartment.

  “Beautiful view, isn’t it?” a male voice suddenly said behind me.

  I turned to see an RCMP officer stepping onto the landing. “Fabulous. But what is that high building beyond the downtown core?”

  “That’s all that remains of Con Mine, one of two gold mines that made Yellowknife a boomtown. That’s the headframe, all twenty-five storeys, the highest structure in the Northwest Territories. It sits atop one of the deepest shafts in the world, over a mile deep.”

  “Is the mine still in operation?”

  “It closed in 2003, but cleaning up the site continues to be a major headache. Arsenic trioxide, a byproduct of gold mining, is very toxic and difficult to get rid of. They managed to clean up the tailing ponds, but the area continues to test high for arsenic. But the site isn’t anywhere near as polluted as the Giant Mine site, which is behind us on the opposite shore of Back Bay. Do you remember the Giant Mine explosion?”

  “Is that the one that killed several striking miners?”