White Heat (49 page)

    The
living room had the same show-home look. The two black leather sofas were
eerily immaculate, as though they had never been sat upon, and were flanked by
black occasional tables, on each of which stood identical cream- coloured
lamps. A series of black-and-white chrome-framed prints of Arctic scenes lined
up along the back wall, presenting the sanitized, picture-perfect, people-free
Arctic fantasy beloved of southern photographers and artists. In the corner was
a telescope, set to look out across Jones Sound.

    Two
further rooms with a bathroom sandwiched between them lay beyond the living
room down a corridor. One served as a bedroom; Robert Patma had converted the
second into a study. Both far corners of the room were occupied by matching
wooden filing cabinets. On the desk in the office there was an envelope
postmarked Tallahassee, Florida with a date of a week ago. Inside was a
handwritten letter addressed to 'Dear Bobby' and signed 'Mom and Dad', along
with a photograph of two elderly people arm-in-arm beside a swimming pool. She
turned the photo over. Someone had pencilled the words 'Jerry and June Patma'
with the date on the back.

    Hadn't
Robert told her his mother had died? There was some muddle over it, she
recalled, a bit of embarrassment when she'd got confused about which parent
he'd lost. Now it looked as though he'd made the whole thing up.

    She
tried the filing cabinets. They were both locked, but the locks gave way
surprisingly easily to the file attachment on Edie's Leatherman. In the first
cabinet, Edie found nothing of interest, but the second Patma reserved for his
financial dealings. These files were marked on the covers only by a long string
of numbers. Edie picked out a file at random and sat at the desk to read it.
Inside there were a couple of certificates marking completion in some aspect of
nursing training, the odd bill for household goods and services, and a few bank
letters. The file appeared to follow no particular order or system, which was
odd given how picky Patma seemed in other aspects of his life. Edie picked
another file, but it was the same story, an odd assortment of bills, financial
statements and guarantees for electrical products.

    Then
it occurred to her that this wasn't random at all. To an outsider, the files
seemed disorganized and undifferentiated but Robert Patma knew exactly what
document was where. The codes on the files enabled Patma to retrieve them at
any time, but they made it extremely difficult for any outsider to locate any
one particular paper trail.

    She
flipped through the files and pulled out a couple of bank statements detailing
half a dozen money transfers into Patma's account. The transfers were for
relatively large amounts but there seemed to be no pattern or consistency to
them, except that they were all from the same source, a name in Russian script.
She checked through the files and found two more recent statements, but the
payments appeared to have stopped. Folding three or four of these transfer
notices into her waistband, she returned the files to the cabinet and left the
room.

    Next
she turned her attentions to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, which was
filled with the usual assortment of Tylenol, shaving foam and ear buds. Next
she tried the bedroom, but there was nothing in the bedside tables, or under
the bed. None of the half-dozen pairs of outdoor boots lined up in the shoe
rack in the wardrobe bore the same polar-bear tread as the one she had found
after Felix Wagner's shooting.

    Drifting
back into the study, convinced, still, that she had missed something, she
yanked out one of the drawers of the second filing cabinet. The force of the
pull shifted the cabinet slightly on its castors and as it rolled forward, one
of the floorboards moved beneath it. As she pulled the cabinet out a little
more, she could see that the board had definitely been loosened. She reached
down and with one finger of her right hand pulled it open, a little at first
then more swiftly as her finger curled underneath. What lay there sent a
terrible pain racing up her spine. She tried to take it in. Her head reeled and
for a moment she thought she would pass out.

    Stacked
in neat rows, ten by ten, were dozens of empty pharmaceutical blister packs,
aligned crosswise, one foil lying one way, the torn covering over the plastic
capsules so neatly pressed back into place you would almost think it untouched,
the next foil, its capsules also neatly covered, stacked on top of it in the
other direction.

    It
was not the usual way a person might stack used and discarded blister packs but
Edie had seen precisely this arrangement before. There was no doubt about it.
The person who had stacked these foils was the same person who had arranged the
Vicodin packs in the drawer of Joe Inukpuk's bedside cabinet.

    Robert
Patma.

    She
turned the foils over in her hand. The lettering matched the Russian script on
the box in the pharmacy. She found a piece of paper in Patma's printer, and
noted it down. Then she replaced the blister packs, and put back the loose
floorboard.

    From
the office she went directly into the kitchen, flinging open the drawers and
cupboards, until, eventually, she found what she was looking for. On a shelf so
high up she had to stand on the worktop to reach it was a catering-size roll of
Saran Wrap. She pulled it down, knocking over a salt grinder. Leaving the
grinder where it was, she turned the wrap over in her hand. The label seal was
missing and some of the plastic had been torn from the sheet using the neat
little row of metal teeth. The cut edge was almost perfectly even, with hardly
any broken serrations or stretch marks, the work of an exceptionally neat
person. Edie already knew where she would find its match.

    Sammy
was still sleeping in his chair outside the medical room. So long as she was
careful, she wouldn't wake him.

    Working
as quietly as a hunter stalking its prey, Edie pulled the box of Russian pills
from the shelf in the pharmacy cupboard and took out fifteen foils, then she
crept past Sammy and tiptoed to the door. She twisted the lock until it clicked
open and slipped inside.

    Edie watched
Robert Patma breathing, with the hypodermic on the table beside him. Her mind
zoned in and out, the thoughts like lichens stuck in willow thicket; dense,
livid stains competing for air. She scrolled through the events of the past
months, thought about Wagner and Taylor, about Derek and the
puikaktuq.
Mostly she thought about Joe.

    In
the few minutes since she had found the Saran Wrap in Robert Patma's kitchen,
it was as though she'd been inhabited by some other, unfamiliar, self. It was
this other person who had taken the box of Hydal from the shelves, who had
sneaked past the sleeping Sammy into Robert Patma's room, then crushed the
tablets, one by one, into a tiny avalanche of white powder and drowned it in
saline. This alternate self was sitting with her now, watching Robert Patma
breathing, while the real Edie conjured up happier times with Joe.

    A
head appeared around the door, startling her out of her thoughts. It was Sammy.

    'Edie,
what are you doing in here?' He was blinking away sleep.

    'I
don't know,' she said. It came to her then, in a rush, like meltwater breaking
over a dam.
She was contemplating murder.

    'You
coming out now?' He hadn't noticed the Hydal.

    'Give
me a moment.'

    Sammy
raised his eyebrows just enough to let her know he considered her behaviour
strange. 'A minute, then,' he said.

    The
instant he disappeared round the door, she picked up the hypodermic and,
rushing to the medical waste-only bin, threw it in. Then she piled the blister
packs in after it and, grabbing a pack of lint dressing, tore open the wrapper
and threw it on top to disguise the contents.

    The
patient lay beside her, sleeping peacefully. A wave of nausea passed through
her body. She retied the tourniquet she'd put around his wounded arm, then, for
the last time, she turned her back on Robert Patma and tiptoed out.

    Sammy
was sitting in his guard's chair, an anxious expression on his face.

    'Sammy,
don't mention this to anyone, eh?' She put a hand on his shoulder, then slipped
away.

    Back
home, she made herself a cup of tea and lay down on the sofa, dazzled by a
magic lantern of thoughts. She tried deep breathing to relax, but after a few
minutes sat up, too wired to settle. There was a DVD lying on the table.
Without looking at it, she slotted it into the machine. The screen flickered
for a moment then the familiar face of Harold Lloyd appeared. Only then did
Edie feel the tears come.

    Martie
found her on the sofa a few hours later.

    'Robert
Patma, eh, who knew?' Her aunt shook her head in disbelief. Her voice lowered
into a conspiratorial rasp. 'There's a dark spirit living in Autisaq,' Martie
said. 'I seen him, Edie, a dark, dark spirit.'

    'I
thought you don't believe in bad spirits, Auntie Martie,' Edie said, yawning.
'Only bad people.'

    'I
don't know, Little Bear,' Martie said. 'I don't know.'

    They
continued the conversation over a breakfast of tea and bannock bread with
syrup. Martie shook her head sadly as Edie told her all that had happened. When
she'd finished her bread and syrup she stood to leave.

    'Don't
get dragged into this any further, Little Bear,' she said. 'It might be bigger
than you think.'

    'It's
too late, Auntie,' Edie said.

    She
was in the shower when the air ambulance announced its arrival with a loud
overhead whine. By the time she dressed, the medics would be arriving at the
nursing station. She hoped they'd find Robert Patma alive. She knew now she
didn't want him to die. She was convinced in her own mind that Robert Patma had
killed Joe Inukpuk on the orders of the Russians, who were supplying his
addiction. Maybe he'd started out as a paid informant. What if the gambling
debts he attributed to Joe were actually his own? Maybe it was no more than
that for a while, but everything changed when he got hooked on painkillers. At
first, she imagined, he'd supplied himself from the pharmacy and when he could
no longer keep his habit fed that way, the Russians stepped in to provide him
with what he needed. Maybe he was connected to Zemmer, too, though there was
nothing to suggest it. The Russians extracted a price from him and that price
was Joe.

    For
what seemed like an age she allowed the warm water to cascade over her body.
Then she scrubbed herself once more and oiled her hair. By the time she got out
of the shower, Derek had left. There was a note in the kitchen by the kettle,
saying that he and Stevie had gone to get Derek's injured leg sorted out.

    It
was only when she was returning from the hospital with Derek several hours
later that she sensed someone had been inside the house. There were subtle
differences in the position of certain objects. She could see immediately, for
example, that her pile of DVDs had been picked up and put back at an ever so
slightly different angle and a few of the books on her shelf had been taken out
and slid back in. It was the same in the bedroom and kitchen, tiny hints that
cupboards had been opened, fingers slid into nooks, boxes searched, corners
inspected.

    It
wouldn't serve anyone right now, she thought, to mention this to Derek or to
Stevie. Most likely it was nothing. Willa had been in, perhaps, or Minnie,
hoping to find some booze. She thought of Koperkuj, still missing. The timing
troubled her.

    She
waited until Stevie was gone and Derek was asleep to check for the stone at the
bottom of the sugar barrel. It was still there. She put the barrel back in its place,
licked her fingers clean and chastised herself for being paranoid.

    The
man who had killed her beloved Joe in exchange for a few pills was being moved
into the air ambulance right now. A police pathologist was examining Joe's body
at the morgue, looking for needle marks. In another hour or two, the evidence
that Robert Patma had murdered Joe Inukpuk and the murderer himself would be on
its way to Iqaluit and she would never have to see Robert Patma again. As she'd
sat beside him last night, listening to his breathing, and contemplating
putting a stop to it, the idea had come to her that he was nothing, an addict,
but then Sammy had come into the room and she'd thought of herself, of her ex
and of Willa.
At some point in our lives, hadn't all of us been the same?
Whatever Robert Patma had done, he wasn't so different from the people she
loved and she could no more put an end to his life than she could kill Sammy or
Willa.