Among the Departed

by Vicki Delany

  “That would be a violation of my body.”

  “Not at all. All they need is a hair follicle, a swab from inside your mouth perhaps. Nothing invasive.”

  “It would be invasive to me.”

  “If you’d rather not come in, we can arrange for a technician to meet you here.”

  Kyle lifted his head. He looked at John. “What part of no didn’t you understand?”

  “Don’t you want to know if this is your father?” Keller asked. “You were what, sixteen when he disappeared? I know the years have been hard on your mother…”

  “You know nothing.”

  “Perhaps your sister would be willing to help us,” John said. “Do you have an address for her?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “You don’t know where she lives?”

  “I haven’t seen or heard from Nicky since she left town years ago.”

  “I can ask your mother.”

  “She won’t know. Nicky’s gone and we don’t keep in touch. Nor do we want to.”

  Eliza felt like she had walked onto a stage to find herself in the midst of a play in rehearsal. “I think I’ll be going,” she said quietly, to no one in particular.

  “Mr. Nowak,” John said, in that calm low voice she recognized as him getting angry. “I’m surprised at your resistance to possible new evidence in this investigation.”

  “I don’t want to live through it all again, get it? It’s over. He’s gone and he’s done enough damage to me. To my mother, I mean.”

  John said nothing; he let the words fill the room. His phone rang. He put his hand in his pocket and checked the display. “Ron Gavin,” he said to his boss. “I’ll take it.”

  Keller looked around the room. “You’re a painter, are you Kyle?”

  “I’m not going to come ’round to slap a fresh coat of paint on your kid’s bedroom wall, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m an artist and my medium is paint and canvas.”

  Eliza studied Paul Keller as he studied the paintings. She saw him struggle to make sense of what he was seeing. She’d been to the chief’s home a few times for dinner or cocktails. He liked pictures of mountain scenes. An avid fisherman, he had some paintings of rivers or streams. He and his wife Karen had a couple of Robert Bateman limited edition prints: wild animals and woodlands perfectly rendered.

  He looked at Eliza, confusion written all over his face. “Never seen a daisy quite that color. It’s not very pretty,” he added lamely.

  “It’s not meant to be fully representational.” Eliza decided on the spot to offer Kyle Nowak a showing at her gallery in Vancouver although that had not been her intention in approaching him. She wanted to promote local artists, locally, and hoped to attract bigger names, with bigger prices, to the main gallery in Vancouver. Kyle’s art attracted feelings and emotions, not many of which would be positive. A bit of controversy would get her fledging gallery noticed. She’d devote the smaller Trafalgar gallery to tourist-attracting and gift-buying works.

  “That was the RCMP officer at the scene,” John said, putting his phone away. “They’ve found part of a jaw. With teeth. We might not need your DNA after all, Mr. Nowak. I’ll be in touch.”

  The two police officers headed for the door. Eliza debated remaining behind to tell Kyle her decision. She took one look at his face and followed her husband and his boss outside.

  Chapter Nine

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” Molly Smith stood at the chief constable’s door.

  “Yes, Molly. Come on in. You can leave the door open. Take a seat.”

  She perched on the edge of a chair, cradling her hat in her hands. She’d been driving back from a minor car accident on Station Street when Jim Denton, the dispatch officer, told her to come in and meet with the chief. Her heart had been in her throat the whole way back as she tried to figure out what she’d done wrong. She’d been a police officer for three years, but she still felt like an imposter. A little girl playing cop; someday the grown-ups would tell her she couldn’t play any more.

  She loved being a police officer and couldn’t imagine what she would do if they took that away from her. She’d killed a man last year, shot him. It was kill or be killed and although she played the incident over and over in her mind, particularly in the dark of night while Adam breathed lightly beside her and Norman snored on the floor, she knew it could have ended no other way.

  An open door to the chief’s office was a good sign. He didn’t fire officers when everyone in the station could overhear.

  Did he?

  Instead of reaming her out, or even praising her for a job well done, he surprised her.

  “How’s your mom doing, Molly?”

  She had been called in to be asked about her mother?

  “Uh, fine.”

  “She’s managing the store all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He reached toward the bar fridge behind his desk. “Want one?”

  “No thanks.”

  He pulled out a can of Coke and popped the tab. He took a long drink and she shifted in her seat. “Making a go of the store on her own is she?” Keller asked at last.

  “It seems to be fine.”

  “Glad to hear it. Have you heard that the remains you and Tocek found might be those of Brian Nowak?”

  “Yes, sir. Sergeant Winters told me.”

  “Nowak disappeared two months before I moved to Calgary. It’s always bothered me that I had to leave that case unresolved.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I came around to your house to talk to you about it, Molly. It was a long time ago.”

  “I remember.”

  “You were having breakfast. Your mom was there but your dad had left for work. Are you still in touch with Nicky, Nowak’s daughter?”

  “No, sir. The family changed after Mr. Nowak left. Nicky had to go home right after school and she couldn’t have any friends around. She dropped out of the baseball team and gave up all her other activities. She quit school before graduating, left town, and I never saw or heard from her again.”

  “Why do you say Mr. Nowak left? Not disappeared?”

  She shrugged. “Just an expression? No, more than that. Middle-aged men don’t get snatched off the street by sexual predators or serial killers. Children certainly, women, sometimes. But men? With bad comb-overs and beer bellies? Doesn’t happen. If he’d been in an accident he would have been found, somewhere, by someone.”

  “Good point,” Keller said, and she was pleased with the praise.

  “Thought I might drop in on your mom later. See what she remembers about the Nowaks. Do you, uh, think that would be okay?”

  He was asking permission to speak to her mother? Lucky Smith and Paul Keller had known each other for a long time. Keller had spent the middle of his career in Trafalgar, coming as a new detective constable, being promoted to sergeant before going to Calgary where he climbed the ladder and ended up head of homicide. He came back to Trafalgar a few years ago to take the position of chief constable. Lucky Smith had always been known, as the expression went, to the police. Not because she was a criminal, but because you could just about guarantee that if any controversy was brewing in Trafalgar, British Columbia, Lucky Smith would have a spoon in the pot. Constable Smith herself had stood between two opposing groups of protesters a couple of years ago, her mother on one side, refusing to back off.

  When she’d applied to the Trafalgar City Police, Smith had been afraid the chief would take one look at her last name and toss her application over his shoulder into the trash.

  Lucky’s husband Andy, Molly Smith’s father, had died seventeen months ago. The death had been sudden, totally unexpected, an enormous shock to everyone. Lucky had been desolate, but in typical Lucky fashion she’d thrown herse
lf even deeper into her political action groups—Molly had grown up edging around clusters of earnest people gathered around her kitchen table—her social advocacy, the store that was their family business.

  The sadness filling her eyes and pulling at the skin on her face was slowly starting to lift.

  “Sure,” Smith said to her boss, thinking this was likely to be a bad idea. Lucky would not be happy at being questioned by the police. Particularly the chief constable. “Mom’s at the store most days. She usually takes Sunday and Monday off.”

  “Thank you, Constable Smith,” he said. “That’ll be all.”

  ***

  Lucky Smith studied the arrangement on the new rack. She moved a gardening book to the center of the display, reconsidered and put it on the bottom. The bell over the shop door tinkled and she turned, professional smile in place.

  “Paul. This is a surprise. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in my store before.” She gave him a real smile. He looked nice, she thought, in his white uniform shirt and blue hat with the blue band.

  He colored slightly. “My oversight.”

  “Are you looking for something? A gift perhaps?”

  “No, nothing. Well, maybe.” He looked around. “Do you have any fishing rods?”

  “Sorry, no. Here you are for the first time in the what, twenty years we’ve known each other, and I don’t have what you’re looking for. We’ve never had much call for fishing stuff. Although that might have been only because it wasn’t an interest of Andy’s.”

  “Tell you the truth, Lucky, I’m not really looking for a rod. Although I’m always looking for a rod, come to think of it. I mean, I’m always looking for…”

  “I understand. Fishing is your hobby is it?”

  “Yes.”

  Every man needs a hobby, she thought. Keeps them from getting underfoot all the time. Although, now that her own husband was no longer underfoot, she missed him so dreadfully.

  She glanced at the large photograph she’d hung on the exposed-brick wall behind the counter. It showed a group of kayaks pushing off from the shores of a lake. A man was caught in the act of jumping into his boat while two others headed out to the open water. The lake and sky were a brilliant blue, the mountains dark green, the surface of the water so still the background was reflected as into a mirror. Only the smooth wake of the red kayaks and the dip of paddles slicing through water disturbed the surface.

  Moonlight and Samwise. Andy taking the kids out in early spring to re-train them on kayak rescue. Lucky had been standing on the shore watching them go and snapped the photograph. She’d found it when going through old boxes looking for pictures to use at Andy’s visitation and had it blown up and mounted.

  She looked back at Paul Keller. He had turned a strange color, and shifted from one foot to the other, his hat tucked under his arm as if he were calling on a date. She smiled at the thought. No one would mistake Chief Constable Paul Keller for a young man. He’d been handsome once, but the years had taken their toll. He’d put on weight that didn’t suit him, particularly around his face, giving him pudgy cheeks and flapping jowls. He didn’t have all that much hair left, but at least he didn’t try to cover up the fact with a comb-over. He kept his mostly gray hair trimmed short.

  Of course, Lucky herself wasn’t exactly a hot young babe. Not that she’d ever been particularly hot, although Andy seemed to think so.

  Andy.

  Everyone expected her to sell Mid-Kootenay Adventure Vacations when he died, but she hadn’t even considered it. She needed the job. Not the money, but the work. She needed to be busy. She could retire, spend her time doing good works, but she and Andy had worked side-by-side in the store for so many years.

  She’d cut the business back a bit, promoted Flower, the part-time assistant, to full time, hired a new part-timer. She brought in some different stock, books mostly, not just tourist guides but to do with nature and the environment. She didn’t offer guided hiking and kayaking trips into the wilderness anymore. Andy had done that himself for many years, then he trained Moonlight and Samwise to lead the excursions, and when the kids left home he’d hired guides. She didn’t have the expertise, and didn’t have the time either, to continue with her part of the business, managing the money, the staff, the inventory, as well as take on all Andy had done.

  No matter. She had an arrangement with a guiding company up the valley to send prospective adventurers their way in exchange for a finder’s fee.

  It had been a hard year, emotionally most of all. She was beginning to get some of her equilibrium back and found that she could occasionally pass as much as an hour without thinking of Andy. Before looking up from her computer to shout out something she’d discovered, or ask him if he wanted to go out for dinner.

  Then that hollow feeling in her heart, when she knew she would get no answer.

  She fought to keep sadness off her face and gave Paul Keller another smile.

  “I’m not here to talk about fishing,” he said. “Although I can always talk about fishing. We’ve had a possible development in the Brian Nowak case. Do you remember it?”

  “I certainly do.”

  “I… Would you like to go for a coffee or something?”

  “Coffee?”

  “Or tea. Have you had lunch?”

  “No, I haven’t had lunch.”

  “Let’s talk over lunch then. My treat. How about Feuilles de Menthe? The patio is open, and the rain should hold off for a while yet.”

  She opened her mouth to say no. It was the middle of a business day; she was working. And Feuilles de Menthe was quite expensive, even for lunch. And she didn’t want a big fancy lunch anyway; she’d had a morning snack of a bran muffin, a big one, from the bakery. And… and… she really couldn’t go to lunch with Paul Keller.

  “Okay,” she said. “That would be nice. We can’t be too long, mind. Flower’s in the back. I’ll tell her I’m going out for a bit.”

  Chapter Ten

  Old bones, long buried, have lost all their magic, John Winters thought. Hard to even imagine this was once a person. A human being with a life, a family, a job, friends, lovers, likes and dislikes. Enemies perhaps.

  “Not much,” Gavin said, “but it gives us something to work with.”

  It was a jaw bone, teeth still attached. These weren’t ancient bones: silver fillings, dull and worn, gave off no sparkle in the fading afternoon light.

  “Can you tell anything about age of the owner? The gender?”

  “Gender, no. Adult or near-adult for sure, and judging by the amount of dentistry probably not young. That’s about the extent of my knowledge. I’m not a bone guy, John. These will have to go to our labs so people who know what they’re doing can have a look at them. They can tell a lot about a person from his or her bones. As to how he died, I’d say we need more than the bits we have to figure that out.”

  “We can use the teeth to identify him though, right?”

  “Teeth are only good for matching with a definite suspect. Someone whose dental records you have. You’ve got someone in mind?”

  “I have a cold case that might be ready to heat up. I checked the file before I came over. Guy’s dentist was Tyler, who’s still practicing in Trafalgar. I called him and he’s okay with sending the suspect’s records to Shirley Lee, the pathologist. Not her field, she said, but she has a forensic dentist friend she can consult. They’ll do the comparison soon as we get the pictures to her. She told me that working from photographs won’t make a positive identification, and might not hold up in court if that were necessary. But it will be enough to let us know if we’re on the right track, or if this is someone completely different and I can pack my bags and go home. When the stuff gets to the labs the big brains will do the detailed comparisons.”

  Gavin held up his camera. “I’ll send them off.�
�

  They were clinging to the hillside about ten yards above the bottom. More bones had been uncovered as investigators climbed the slope. Trenches had been dug through the dirt and there were patches of bare earth where leaves and branches had been lifted and carried out of the way. It was heavily overcast, rain threatening. The air was full of the ripe scent of long-decaying leaf mulch, now disturbed. Everyone’s boots and pant legs were thick with dirt. It had been hard going, the slope almost vertical in places, the forest floor littered with rocks and vegetation. The mountainside continued about another fifty yards before flattening out.

  “The last thing we need is rain,” Gavin said, following Winters’ eyes. “We’ve torn up the forest floor enough. With a dose of rainwater we’ll be swimming in mud.”

  “Anyone been to the top yet?” Winters asked.

  “I have,” Adam Tocek said. “For a quick look around.”

  “We wanted to make sure there isn’t a bone factory or something over the ridge,” Alison Townshend said.

  “Nothing but forest,” Tocek said. “There’s a ledge, twenty feet wide or so. Above that the mountain carries on just about straight up.”

  “Why would our guy, either the dead fellow or whoever brought him here, have been up there? No one would have walked up this slope for a hike, and carrying something heavy like a body? Can’t see it. Do you think it might have changed much in fifteen years?”

  Everyone shrugged.

  “I know someone who’d know,” Tocek said.

  “Who?”

  “Molly. Molly’s been climbing these mountains since she could walk, probably before. She led tourists on weeklong trips into the wilderness when she was just a kid. When we were here the other night, she said the park had changed.”

  “I’ll call her. Tell her to come prepared for a good tough hike.”

  The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the clouds opened and rain began to fall in a torrent. The Mounties had hung tarps from trees to protect their excavations, and everyone bolted for cover.