It took twenty minutes, lots of photo ID, and a phone call to DS Buckle before Two-Trees had won over the vice-principal. The principal was too busy on calls and meetings to chat with him. Even then, vice-principal Laura Maurelli seemed determined to be rid of him.
“We’re all on edge right now,” she explained. “You can understand.”
Two-Trees wiped his nose. He hadn’t realized that Styroforma was so close to the school, but judging by the air quality, they must have been directly downwind. “All the more reason to chase down as many leads as possible, as fast as possible.”
“These kids,” Maurelli began. “They’re all pretty broken up since Sydney went missing.”
“She’s a student here?”
“Was,” she answered. She had severe cheekbones and striated jaw muscles, as if she made a habit of substituting steel cables for liquorice twists. It was a Wyrd habit of his, to notice these things. “I’d had high hopes for her. I thought she’d beat the odds.”
Maurelli scraped fine, short auburn hair behind a small ear. A military cut. Her hair was chin-length at the front but clean shaven above the collar at the back, and it accentuated the angularity of her face. She might have been forty-five at the outside, a smoker, well-dressed for such an inner city school, left-handed, and by the look of it, unmarried. On her desk, she had pictures of two dogs—an aged Shih Zhu, and a brown mutt nearly twice its size. She had pictures of boys too, both high school aged. Two-Trees hoped they were related, because—he shuddered at the thought—it wouldn’t be the first time a teacher showed too much affection for under-aged students of the opposite sex. The rest of her desk was cluttered with printed emails, class assignments, a collective agreement, and two newspapers. In her hand, she held some of Two-Trees’ renderings of Head B’s facial reconstruction.
“No, I don’t recognize any of them,” she said. “Jesus, you’d think the cops would be more worried about finding Sydney, instead of trying to figure out who died.” Maurelli took the top printout and slapped it to the bottom of the flopping stack of papers in her hand. “I mean, God, it’s not like this kid is going to get any deader. At least with Sydney there’s still a chance we can find her and keep her alive. I’ve been out of my mind, worrying about her.” She flipped to the next printout.
Her eyebrows pinched together, and jaw muscles jumped. Her muscles relaxed, and the lines between her eyebrows faded. She’d seen something. Lines appeared again, and she quickly shuffled the new top page to the bottom. It had been one of the variant pictures of the morbidly obese boy.
“So Sydney did drop out of school?” Two-Trees asked.
“Dropped off the radar by mid-September. It’s a long story.” She didn’t seem inclined to tell it. “She’d been bullied for years because of her parents. One of them was murdered, or so we think.”
“But she was only reported missing a few days ago.”
“A couple of her more responsible friends came to me and said that she’d stopped coming by. She’d been living on the streets for months, ever since about February this year. Her friends did what they could to spot her some cash, food, whatever they could sneak out of the house, and give it to her here, at school. She passed Grade Eleven by the skin of her teeth, but she was really committed. Driven, you know? Dumb as a post, but she worked hard, especially considering her living situation. I really thought she was going to do all right this year.” She tossed down the papers in a flutter. “But what the hell do I know? I did everything I could, too, as much as the school board would allow. Then some dickhead parent complained that I was showing favouritism and lodged a formal complaint, and now I’m on notice. One more complaint in the next six months, and I’m out of a job.”
“Wow. That was a dick move.”
“Ugh, don’t even get me started.” She paused and tapped the printouts on her desk. “Is there a number I can reach you at?”
“Sure.” He apologized for his cell number being long distance, as it was a Winnipeg exchange. “Send me a text and I can call you back locally.”
“Sounds like a plan.” She sat at her desk and straightened the printouts, as if the conversation was officially over and he was free to leave. “We’ll make copies and have the teachers and counsellors take them around. None of them look familiar to me, but who knows, maybe you’re right. Maybe one of the students will recognize a face.”
Two-Trees cleared his throat and took a step closer to her desk. “If it’s all the same with you . . .”
She closed her eyes and raised her hand, as if she didn’t want to see where he was going with this new train of thought. “These kids are stressed out. Police have been in and out of these doors every day for a week, asking questions, pinning kids down. Half of them have called in sick. And can you blame them? Having you in here haranguing them with questions will only make matters worse. I’ll show them these pictures, and once I have information for you, I’ll call you.”
Straight to the point then. All right. “There’s another reason why I came here today.”
“Great. What is it?”
“I think one of your students is a witness to a murder. I need to find him before the police do.”
She laughed.
“I think he’s scared, and he’s got more than one life to be worried for. And thanks to a little indiscretion on his part this morning at a pharmacy, the police are going to be looking for him. If he’s a witness, if he ends up in police custody . . .”
Her eyes were as dark as his, and they never seemed to blink.
“Do you watch a lot of TV, Mr. Two-Trees?” she asked.
“Doctor Two-Trees, thanks, PhD forensic anthropology, specializing in the identification of human remains.” He rubbed his forehead. “Eight years ago, a man stabbed his wife at a crowded dinner party, then had to figure out what to do with the witnesses. Would you like to know why I was called in?”
She didn’t answer.
He pointed to the newspapers on her desk. “The murder in question might be gang related. Believe me, a gang is more resourceful than a pot-bellied plumber with a petite carver.”
She pursed her lips and cleaned a molar with her tongue.
“That means we have to rely on three resources we have left: speed, technology, and community.”
She looked away.
Two-Trees persisted. “The boy I’m looking for robbed a pharmacy this morning, and chances are his face was caught on surveillance cameras. If he’s local, it won’t take long for someone to recognize him. A charge of petty theft is just what the police need to bring him in without making it look like they’re questioning a witness. Do you follow?”
She nodded. “Then the police should do their job. In person. With a warrant.” She tapped his papers on her desk. “In the meantime, next time you want to bully me into showing you around my school, bring a badge and a warrant. Because for all I know, Doctor Two-Trees, you could be the resourceful guy who’s out looking for witnesses to harass. Have a nice day.”
Two-Trees stood taller.
He actually liked this woman.
“I’m going to be all over this town,” Two-Trees said. “Asking questions, showing those pictures, looking for people—especially young ones. Especially this one.” He reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a folded Missing Persons notice. “And if I find any information,” he said, “I’ll let you know.”
She looked at the picture of Sydney Mission, then at him, then back at the missing persons report. Her cheek looked like a tightly strung harp.
“I’m the one who called that in,” she said. “It took three days for them to put it on the news. Three days.” She put her hands on her hips. “I called the newspaper editor eight times after the police filed the official missing person’s report. Yesterday, at the end of one of those calls, I put myself on mute. They thought I’d hung up. ‘Just another Indian runaway,’ the editor said. Heard it as loud as thunder. ‘Just another Indian runaway’.” She crossed her arms like she was
cold, and she drummed her fingers on her collarbone. She was thinking hard.
“She’s not from Waabishkindibed, is she?”
She seemed surprised at his fluency.
“No, and that’s what drives me mad!” she said. “Her mother’s boyfriend is from the ’Bed. Was. Whatever. No one knows where he’s gone.”
“And where’s her mother?”
“Ran off eight months ago in the middle of the night without even paying the rent. Left two hundred bucks on the counter and a note saying ‘Sorry’. Sydney’s been staying with friends of the family. A friend of an aunt, I think, until she was kicked out.”
“Ran off? How does a mother just run off like that?”
She shrugged. “Catherine Mission . . .” She cleared her throat. “Hasn’t been right in the head. Not since Pritchard Park.” He was about to ask if Catherine Mission had any connections to the brothers involved in the Pritchard Park incident, but she took a sharp breath. “Two-Trees. Hector.” She seemed to roll the names around in her mouth to better taste their flavour. “Any relation to Red Cloud?”
“Yes, actually,” Two-Trees said, with a smile.
“I thought you looked familiar. Red Cloud officiated at my wedding, almost twenty years ago.” But I’m divorced now, her angry and embarrassed expression seemed to say.
“Red Cloud was my grandfather. Hector Two-Trees was his legal name.” He inclined his head. “I am a local boy, Ms. Maurelli. And I was called in to investigate Pritchard Park, and I was the one who identified the body as one of the Reid brothers. And no, I’m not here to fulfil some vigilante CSI fantasy. I’m here because two kids have been dismembered and thrown away, and because a girl is missing, and because if we don’t jump on this, someone else is going to get hurt. I’m not a cop, but I’m not useless either. And if more civilians got off their asses to help, to do something other than complain, we’d have a lot fewer ‘just another runaway’ girls, don’t you think?”
She fiddled with the picture of her dogs. “He was an interesting guy, that Mr. Red Cloud.”
You’re avoiding me, and yet you’re trying to win me over. What’s on your mind, Ms. Maurelli? He needed to know what she recognized about the obese boy, and more importantly, why she denied knowing him. He decided to charm his way into her good graces and see what became of his efforts. “Ever read the picture book Sister Whitehair and the Trickster as a kid?” he asked.
“Sure. He came to our school and read it to us, way waaaaaay back in the day. He wrote it, didn’t he? Based on oral tradition or something?”
“No, he made it up himself. He painted all the illustrations, too. I was the model for Wenabozho, the Trickster. I was nine at the time. Red Cloud was a great storyteller.”
She nodded and spoke softly. “I heard about his death when it was news. I mean, we all did. That was no way to go.”
She didn’t know the half of it. The world knew that Red Cloud had been axed in the face by some drunken Indian. Hector Two-Trees and his father knew better.
Two-Trees grunted. “Well . . . just one more unsolved Halo County mystery. Just one more Indian, right?” he said, with more gravity than he’d intended. The suspension cables between her jaw and cheekbone seemed to soften a little. He checked his phone for the time. “Could you take another look at those photos? Maybe one of them was a student from a few years ago. Maybe the faces are older from when you knew them last. I can’t be sure of the decedent’s age, not until we get a more thorough work-up from the medical examiner.”
“Mr. Two-Trees,” she began impatiently.
He wasn’t getting anywhere, and his own frustration was making it awfully hard to be charming. “I know you’re busy, and I realize I’m barging in on your turf without an invitation. But can we stay in touch? Please?”
She considered it. She nodded. “What’s the best time to call?”
“As soon as humanly possible.” He offered to send her a soft copy of each of the pictures, she accepted, and he left in search of the internet café.
Chapter Twelve
BRIDGET ALSO MADE a habit of chewing on construction materials, but she didn’t have the same striated jaw as Laura Maurelli. She had a head like a volleyball squashed top and bottom, with Neanderthal eyebrows, full lips, and a mischievous gleam in her eyes. When Two-Trees entered the café, she rose and signalled him over. He approached the table, taking off his gloves. “Sorry I’m late.” Ishmael nodded impatiently and pointed at the seat across from him. Holly said hello. The Padre kept his grouchy face hidden behind the visor of a baseball cap.
“We haven’t been here long either.” Bridget was only armpit high on Two-Trees. He went in for a hug, but she was all business, clasping his wrist in a warrior’s handshake instead. “Sit. We shouldn’t stay long.” That morning, she’d applied her scar cream to hide her hyena-freckles, but it did little to soften her displeased expression.
Two-Trees wanted to say that he’d been worried sick about her since the Wyndham Farms thing. They’d spent the last six years joined at the hip, sharing the same hotel rooms, and finishing each other’s meals. Since the escape, they hadn’t so much as spoken to each other. He could tell she was short on sleep. He wanted to ask her how she was, make sure she was all right, let her get a month of stress off her chest, let her shout and weep, if that was what she needed. Instead, he sat in the booth beside her, across from the others, and began to explain where he’d come from and why he was late.
“You two would hit it off,” Two-Trees mused. “In a baseball bat to the head kind of way.”
“She’s too soft?” Bridget asked.
“She’s too much like you.”
The Padre sat in the corner of the booth, arms crossed until he tugged down the brim of his stiff baseball cap. That hat, along with a denim jacket, plaid shirt, and faded jeans, should have made him blend in with the local custom. In a way, it did; the Padre looked very much in his element. He looked like the wildcat-trucker type, wiry and small and quick to be mean, like so many of the White folks who lived in Halo County. The problem was, the Padre looked guilty, and he looked mad. Ishmael sat beside him—practically on him—to keep him from clawing his way out of the booth.
“This,” Two-Trees said, pointing at the Padre, “was a bad idea.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Bridget agreed. “But he’s still got to eat.”
“And he wouldn’t stand out so much if you didn’t point at him,” Ishmael added.
Despite the fact that they’d both belonged to Wyrd for well over thirty years, each, it was only the second time Two-Trees had seen Ishmael. They knew of each other though, since Ishmael had been the field mission coordinator for the longest time. They’d never worked as partners, and most field briefings were done at Varco Lake with only the lycanthropic partner present, while the human stayed in the car, or better yet, at a hotel in Winnipeg.
There was no doubt that Ishmael was as inhuman as Bridget was. His hair was as thick as rabbit fur, the fingers of his broad hand were nearly all the same length, his upper and lower canine teeth were thick behind his lips, and there was something mutable under the skin of his face, as if some invisible sculptor was subtly massaging the clay of his bones. To the layman’s eye, that constant, physical fluctuation made the viewer so subconsciously uncomfortable that the eye simply turned away. To the analytical gaze, it was nothing more than a perpetual, travelling facial tic. To the trained eye, it was the second best way to spot a lycanthrope in a crowd. Only Harvey’s dogs were more reliable when it came to detection.
Two-Trees had been expecting some brooding, brilliant, intensely staring sex-god, based on Bridget’s description. Instead, sitting across from Two-Trees was a cagey, soft-spoken, broad-shouldered professional in business casual, wearing the pale sheen of a man with the flu. Fresh out of Wyndham Farms, Ishmael had looked like a sheepish Bruce Banner holding up his overstretched pants by the waistband. Now, except for the neck muscles and his one-size-too-small polo shirt, Ishmael could have
passed for anybody in corporate tech support. And this man was in dire need of a new coat, because the one he had no longer fit him in the sleeves or collar.
But most of all, it was Ishmael’s behaviour that gave him away. He never made eye contact with anyone at the table. He always seemed to look just past a person, to their right or left, or more often, about chest high, and was always distracted by any sudden movement. Whenever there was a loud noise, Ishmael’s eyes would flash open and he’d orient toward the sound with an alarmed and hungry expression. Two-Trees figured Ishmael wore dark contact lenses for two good reasons: one, to cover up the famous mismatch, and two, to disguise the way his pupils would dilate until there was little colour left, as happened with any normal, hyper-aware housecat. If manufactured correctly, Two-Trees thought, contacts might even help to refract the cat’s-eye reflection, if someone shone a light on him. Like the Padre, Ishmael had purchased a ball cap, though he left this upside down on his lap while he ate calmly and prodigiously. And, like all lycanthropes, he had a craving for calcium, so when no one was looking, he crushed his empty eggshells into tiny pieces, which he then sprinkled on toast and covered with jam.
Holly rarely lifted her eyes either. She was as shy as they came. Her hair was light and airy, but it was so blonde it could have passed for white, and her skin was pale except for a recent sunburn on one side of her face, probably from sitting in the truck for too long. She glanced up only once, flashing a shade of blue Two-Trees only saw deep in icebergs.
Helix: Plague of Ghouls Page 15