“Should we sit?” I whispered.
Gene’s answer sounded loud in the little room. “Let’s wait for Knapton.”
Sergeant Knapton swept in. Even though it was summer, he wore a mid-calf-length trench coat, a light brown suit, and a brown tie. I felt underdressed in my long-sleeved turtleneck and tatty black fleece pants.
“Good morning. We wait for the judge before we’re seated.”
I shifted from one foot to the other while we stood there. Richard was somewhere close by, and I wasn’t sure what it would be like to see him again.
A door to the right of the desk opened. Richard walked in, accompanied by a RCMP officer. Chin up, lips pursed, he stared straight ahead and didn’t acknowledge us. Bart and another officer followed. Nobody said a word.
The opposite door opened. A middle-aged man in a long black robe marched in. With high cheekbones, dark brown eyes, and copper skin, the judge looked distinctly Haida. He pointed to his right. “Knapton, you and your key witness may sit there. Other witness behind. Accused on the other side.”
Chairs scraped across the floor as Knapton and the officers followed the judge’s directions.
“You may sit,” he said.
We did.
“Court recorder, please.”
A woman with black hair severely pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck walked in and settled into a seat with a writing armrest. She opened a notebook and held a pen at the ready.
The judge cleared his throat. “I am Judge Halverson.” He lifted the topmost sheet of paper from a perfect stack on the desk, pulled out a pair of half-eye reading glasses from the recesses of his robe, settled the glasses on the end of his nose, and frowned at the sheet. “Let’s see. Yes. We have a case of alleged kidnapping.” He looked at Knapton over the glasses.
Knapton stood. “The victim, Mara Tusconi, is here, Your Honor. She will describe how Richard Edenshaw, with Bart Benniger’s help, took her against her will and left her for dead in the Moresby Swamp.”
One of Halverson’s eyebrows shot up. Leaving someone in the Moresby Swamp appeared to be a dangerous thing to do.
The judged turned to Richard. “Does the accused have council?”
Richard stood and spoke with a clear, unwavering voice. “I represent myself, Your Honor.”
“As you wish.”
Richard sat down.
Halverson gestured at Bart, seated behind us. “And who is this?”
“Witness against the accused, Your Honor.”
Richard flexed a hand. I could see white knuckles.
Halverson directed a question at Gene in the back of the room. “And you, sir?”
Gene stated his name. “I’m an interested party, Your Honor. Dr. Tusconi is a visitor to Haida Gwaii. I’m a Watchman and have accompanied her on her visit.”
“Mr. Edenshaw may stay. Witness may state her case.”
I stood and briefly described my saga from the fake phone text to the helicopter rescue. Richard remained passive through most of my testimony. When I slid my shirt sleeve up to show Halverson the bear gouges, the judge’s eyebrows shot up so high his glasses feel off. Richard glanced at the arm and flinched.
Knapton called Bart, who confirmed the kidnapping.
“Son, do you realize the seriousness of what you’ve done?” Halverson asked.
I glanced at Bart who stood in the space between us and Richard. He bit his lip and flushed. “Yes, Your Honor.”
Richard wiped his palms on his shirt.
The judge turned to Richard. “Accused, please stand. Do you deny the charges placed against you?”
Richard lifted his chin. “I do. I’m a respected businessman in Vancouver. It’s ridiculous to think I would kill my brother.” He turned and pointed to Bart and me. “Both of them, they’re liars.”
Bart sucked in some air. I glared at Richard with a fury that boiled up from deep in my gut. He turned away.
Judge Halverson picked up a gavel and slammed it onto a wooden disk on his desk. “The case will go to trial. Bail is set at twenty-five thousand dollars. Witness against the accused,” he glanced at his sheet, “Bart Bennniger, released to custody of a responsible adult, if we can locate such a person.”
Gene’s voice from the back. “I’ll take that responsibility, Your Honor.”
“Thank you. See my deputy. All rise.”
My last view of Richard Edenshaw was from the back. He held his head high, but hunched shoulders and twitching hands gave him away.
Outside, Gene and I listened to Knapton.
“Couldn’t have gone better,” he said. “You made all the difference, Mara.”
“It was worth it. What happens now?”
“Richard, of course, will raise the bail and hire the best lawyer. Trial won’t be for a couple of months at least. You won’t need to come back since the judge has your testimony. Assuming he’s convicted, he’ll get at least five years for the kidnapping.”
“Could someone go after him in jail?” I asked. “Another Haida, I mean. Because he murdered William?”
“Maybe so.” Gene said.
“And Bart?”
“Not sure. Depends on prior arrests, that kind of thing.”
“What about William’s death?”
“Wish that was more definitive for his parents, if nothing else. Still waiting on forensics.”
“In other words, if Richard had let me fly back home, he may’ve gotten away with it.”
Gene put a hand on my shoulder. “And if you’d died in Moresby Swamp, he would have murdered two people and gotten away with it.”
29
I swiveled in my window seat for a final look back at Haida Gwaii. Below, steep emerald mountains fringed by white wave-aprons thrust straight up out of the sea. A confusion of islands, inlets, bays, beaches, and river-mouths outlined the archipelago. I last glimpsed the southernmost part of the park—Rose Harbor, Augustine Island, and Kinuk.
It registered that Sergeant Knapton had spoken to me. I turned and faced him.
“Sorry, what?”
“Mara, you’d make a good detective. If you get tired of your job in Maine, you could immigrate and become a Canadian Mounty.”
It felt good to laugh.
We joined the crowds in Vancouver International.
Knapton said, “When’s your flight?”
“Two plus hours.”
He shook my hand. “If we learn how William died, I’ll let you know what I can. And Vancouver has a famous anthropology museum with a couple of exhibits right in the airport you’ll enjoy.”
Sergeant Knapton was right. Just beyond the security checkpoint, a sculpture that nearly touched the ceiling bore witness to the Haida’s flair for humor. A panicked passenger—his glasses askew, hat falling off, suitcase in each outstretched hand—sprinted for his plane. Even someone grumpy from a long security line would have to chuckle.
Given what I now knew about the Haida, I was excited to spend time viewing “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii: the Jade Canoe,” created by Bill Reid, the Haida nation’s most famous artist. Surrounded by windows, the rich green sculpture dwarfed viewers. The carved canoe overflowed with paddlers and creatures. Raven hung off the stern. The bird appeared intent on steering forward but, of course, could change its mind in an instant. Beneath Raven’s wing crouched an unhappy human figure with a peaked Haida hat—the grudging oarsman. The tall, proud man in the middle looked like a shaman.
A boy tugged on his father’s sleeve. “Dad, where are they all going?”
The man looked at his tablet. “Here’s what the carver said. ‘There’s certainly no lack of activity in the little boat, but is there purpose? The boat moves on, forever in one place.’”
Reid’s words hit home. Plenty of people who vowed to transform their lives stayed stuck in destructive behaviors. I’d have to make sure that wasn’t my personal fate, too.
Signs directed me to more artwork in a room dedicated to rotating exhibits. At one end, armchairs wer
e placed before a sizable TV screen. I dropped into one as the video took viewers inside the entrance of the Reid amphitheater in UBC’s anthropology museum.
“Holy cow.”
Illuminated from above by a circular skylight thirty feet across, “The Raven and the First Men” perched on a round pedestal in the middle of a rotunda. Wings spread, the raven crouched on a clamshell and looked down at human-like creatures who peeked out from beneath the shell. Light tan, in sunlight the sculpture glowed. Photos I’d seen didn’t capture the immense scale and artist’s attention to detail.
The camera took viewers down cement steps that surrounded the pedestal and slowly circled the sculpture. Raven’s oversized eye appeared to follow the lens.
A smiling young lady with jet-black hair cut in a cap around her head, red lipstick, and a white shirt appeared on screen. “Hello, I’m Marcia, a guide at University of British Columbia’s anthropology museum. I’d like to tell you a little about this magnificent sculpture.” She gestured toward the piece. “With ‘The Raven and the First Men,’ Bill Reid shows us the story of human creation. One day, Raven walked along the beach in Haida Gwaii. He heard noise coming from a half-buried clamshell and saw it was full of little human creatures. The Raven and the big world outside their shell terrified the people. The bird leaned his huge head close to the shell. With his smooth trickster’s voice, he sweet-talked the little creatures to come out and play in his wonderful, shiny, new world.”
Marcia slowly circled the sculpture, talking as she went. “Bill Reid was a master goldsmith, carver, and sculptor. In nineteen fifty-four he visited his uncle, Charles Edenshaw, in Haida Gwaii. Edenshaw’s carvings changed Bill Reid’s life.”
A photograph of Reid carving a totem pole filled the screen. In voiceover, Marcia said, “Bill Reid’s mother was Haida, his father European. The Haida call him their own. When he died in nineteen ninety-eight, they brought his remains back to his mother’s ancestral village, Tanu, in Haida Gwaii.”
Marcia ended with an invitation for viewers to visit the museum.
Edenshaw was such a common last name on the archipelago, like Smith or Jones in the States. And it was interesting that Reid was half-Haida, like William and Richard. Like the famous artist, the Haida called William their own while Richard had denounced his Haida ancestry.
An open case at the other end of the room displayed masks people could try on. I scanned the selection. One painted bright blue had oversized white teeth, a mean grin, and bulging black eyes. A bear with one eye circled in red bared its fangs. I’d had enough of bears. Compared to those, the raven mask looked kindly with its long black beak, fringe for a neck, and black eyes on a white background. I lifted the raven off its peg and positioned the mask over my head.
The transformation was immediate. I rose off the floor and feathers covered my body.
I yanked off the mask and shook my head. “Damn. They should put a warning sign next to this case.” I carefully replaced the raven and studied its eyes. No glowing ones stared back, but I didn’t need that to respect the power of Haida art and mythology. Never again would I automatically reject spiritual claims of sincere and learned people.
A display in a far corner caught my eye. “Finding Spiritual” featured quotes and images of famous people. I read the words of three again and again.
Emily Carr’s photograph showed a forgettable middle-aged woman with a black cap and dog.
I am religious and always have been, but I am not a churchgoer…I longed to get out of church and crisp up in the open air. God got so stuffy and squeezed out in church. Only out in the open is there room for Him. He was like a great breathing among the trees…He just was and filled all the universe.
The Dalai Lama’s photo showed the gleeful monk in his younger days. He’d said:
…preservation of environment, it is related with many things. Ultimately the decision must come from the human heart, isn’t that right? So I think the key point is a genuine sense of universal responsibility which is based on love, compassion, and clear awareness.
Huh. A week ago, I would have scoffed at a link between love and conservation.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit Priest, French philosopher, and paleontologist excavated caves before World War I. He looked like a serious academic in his photograph.
The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Alone in the room, I digested the wisdom of these three people. They spoke about nature and science together with love, religion, and God. For them, the world they could measure and see was intimately linked to human emotion and the spiritual. The connection was undeniable to these perceptive, influential people. Why had I insisted on separating the physical and spiritual?
A question instead of an answer.
My question was akin to looking at data in a different way—when numbers I’d stared at for months suddenly formed a pattern.
Something shifted inside.
The flight was long. I skipped the Tom Hanks movie about a guy shipwrecked on an island and catnapped for most of the trip. Weird images—Gene in a raven mask and talking totem poles—interrupted my dreams.
Early in the morning, the plane approached Logan airport. From my window seat, Boston Harbor came into view, as familiar as clam chowder and baked beans. It was too early in the day for sailboats, but the ferry that steamed out could have been heading for Cape Cod or Nantucket Island.
Angelo had offered to come down to Boston to pick me up, but I insisted I’d take the bus north, since five hours one way was too long a drive. He’d relented when I reminded him about the awful Boston traffic.
With a stop in Portland, the bus took me north to Belfast, where Angelo picked me up. He jumped out of his truck as I pushed aside the bus station door. “My god, Mara, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
He held out his arms.
On tiptoe, I wrapped my good arm around him His cotton shirt was soft, and he smelled mostly of salt and a little of fish.
I stepped back and patted his shirt. “Been fishin’?”
“With Connor. Blues are running now. I did wash up, though.”
I stepped onto the running board and slid onto the front seat.
“Belfast’s a little too busy for me,” Angelo said.
I directed him back to the highway and didn’t say a word. The population of Belfast was less than three thousand.
We headed north. After Haida Gwaii’s ancient cedar rainforest, Maine’s second-growth conifers and hardwoods along the highway looked puny in comparison.
“You too tired to come over for dinner tonight?” Angelo asked. “Thought I’d invite Connor, Harvey, and Ted. ‘Course we want to hear about everything.”
“For sure. Home cooking, especially your home cooking, would be terrific. I slept some on the plane and can take a nap this afternoon.”
As we bounced along the mile-long dirt road down to my house, Angelo gave me the latest local news.
“Big blow-up with the Penobscot and the Gov’nor. He denies sovereignty on their land.”
“That’s not surprising.” Maine’s governor was one of my least favorite people in the world.
“And The Neap Tide’s serving crab cakes now.”
“Fantastic.” I spent a lot of time in the Spruce Harbor café.
It was strange to walk into my kitchen after a trip without a suitcase trailing behind me or a duffle on my shoulder. I opened the cottage’s windows and stepped outside to enjoy the view from the edge of my tiny lawn. In the chilly afternoon breeze off the water, it felt good to sit on a granite outcrop warmed by the August sun.
I’d tasted death, and was very glad to be home. I drank in the coast of Maine and watched naked waves turn into whitecaps, gulls fight over fish, and an eagle land on a pine tree. When I stood to head inside for a quick nap, I took
the screech of an osprey as a welcome-back.
There were four trucks in Angelo’s driveway—Harvey’s, Ted’s, Connor’s, and Angelo’s. At least they were different colors. Harvey’s bright red Ford with shiny black wheels and a black bumper-winch combo outclassed the others.
I ran up the stone steps and pulled open the oak door. Everyone was in Angelo’s big kitchen. My godfather stood at the old-fashioned slate sink rinsing fish fillets. Beside him, Ted scraped cucumbers onto an oversized cutting board. Heads close together, Harvey and Connor sat at the kitchen table. They hadn’t seen each other for over a week. From Connor’s nods, it looked like she was describing highlights of the trip.
Not that long ago, Harvey had claimed she was lonely, but local men were too rough for her. She and Connor clicked when they teamed up to help me investigate our colleague’s death. It was pretty clear Connor adored Harvey, and the admiration was mutual.
With bright blue eyes and black curls going to gray, Connor looked like an aging Irish altar boy. A striking blond with high cheekbones and large gray eyes, Harvey was an inch taller and eight years younger. I was proud of Harvey. She put aside her silver spoon and private-school upbringing, and fell for a local Mainer and former cop. They did have a lot in common. Both loved the outdoors and hunted deer, moose, and bear.
Connor was teaching Harvey how to fish. She’d introduced him to jazz, and they’d driven down to Portland for a couple of concerts. Because she was willing to change, Harvey found a terrific soul mate.
I was excited to talk with Ted, and turned toward him. He stared into space. A couple of cucumber scrapings lay at his feet. I guessed he hadn’t caught up on his sleep.
I walked over to him. “How’re you doing?”
Ted shrugged. “Okay. How was your trip?”
“Fine. I texted you about why I needed to stay longer.”
He grabbed another cucumber. “You did. You’ll have to tell us about it.”
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