Hungry Ghosts (34 page)

67

Mabel Nahwegahbow moved stiffly, arthritis twisting
her knees.

“You know, Charlie, I think I have a photograph of those children, those little boys. They took it the day an official from the church visited the school. They all got dressed up, like the Pope himself was going to be there. That's why I remember it so well. That one little boy you were talking about, yes, I remember him too. He drowned in the lake the very next day.”

She walked to a cabinet that held china and figurines in the upper part and opened a drawer. She removed a pile of photographs and brushed the top one gently.

“I loved those little children, you know. I tried to speak Ojibway to them, but we weren't supposed to, and if we did, we got punished. Can't tell you how many times those nuns got me with a ruler. And I wasn't even a student by then; I was the kitchen help.”

She handed him the photo. “This one.” She pointed. “On the end of that row in the front. The little one in front of the priest.
That's the boy that drowned. I guess he thought he could make it across the harbour and get home, but the ice gave way. He wasn't very old, maybe seven. Oh, my, I remember the principal was really mad. He said that we shouldn't tell anyone, that he'd take care of it. But I saw the older boys outside with shovels that night, digging a hole in the ground.” She wiped away a tear. “I was only fifteen myself, you know. I'd finished my fourth grade, so they made me work in the kitchen. There was nothing I could do to protect any of those little children. I still feel guilty about that.”

“Do you know his name—the boy who drowned?”

“His English name was Joseph, but the other boys called him Manajiwin. That's how I knew who you were looking for as soon as you mentioned it. Do you know what it means in our language?”

“Respect,” said Pike.

“That's right.” The old woman sighed. “There was one nun who was always after him, poor little Joe. Oh, she was bad. She'd grab him by the ear and twist it hard till he cried. Show some respect, she'd say whenever she scolded him. I think the other boys thought if they called him that, the sister could see respect whenever she looked at him and maybe she'd stop hurting him.”

“What about his brothers? Can you remember anything about them?”

“Oh, my, let me think. There were four of them. Peter was the oldest. He must have been nine or ten. Then came Joseph, the little one who drowned. Then Thomas. And John was the littlest. He was maybe five.” She smiled. “The older boys called him Long John, after Long John Silver, the pirate, because he had really long hair when he first came to school. The teachers cut it all off, all that beautiful hair. That frightened us, because we only cut our hair when someone died.

“They loved puns, all the children. They made up names for all the nuns and the priests. ‘Big Foot' for Father Lafete. That made me laugh to myself whenever they whispered it, because that priest
certainly did have big feet, I must say. And I remember they called that visiting priest ‘Little Ray of Sunshine' when he came too, but I can't remember why. He was the one that came to the school the day that Joe drowned. He's in that picture. That's little Joe he's standing behind. Funny what you remember after all these years, isn't it?”

Pike looked at the photograph. There were three rows of Ojibway children lined up on benches, girls and boys. The boys' hair was cut short and they wore awkward, ill-fitting suits. Some looked like they'd been squirming when the camera captured their images. The girls had long skirts, their hair plaited. They sat passively, resigned.

A young priest stood at the end of the first row, his hands resting lightly on the shoulder of the small boy Mabel had identified as Joseph, the boy that drowned. The priest was Ray Callendes. He was the only person smiling.

“Did Peter have a nickname too?”

Mabel looked at the ceiling for a minute, thinking. “They called him Peter Rabbit, now that I think of it, because he'd steal vegetables from the garden, but he always got caught.”

“Was that his last name, Rabbit?”

“Oh, no, I don't think so. There are some Rabbits around Manitoulin Island, but that's pretty far south. And I've met some Rabbit Skin people too, but they were all Cree. These boys spoke the same language as us. Not from Sandy Lake or Manomin Bay, but somewhere not too far; we had the same accent. I remember whenever they called him Rabbit, he'd smile. A sweet little boy, you know. Whenever he smiled, he lit right up.”

Pike thought of the old man who called him son, and the damage caused to him by the priest who stood at the end of the row, his hands resting casually on the shoulders of the child he'd already chosen as his next victim. Angry tears stung Pike's eyes.

“He had really long hair too, when he started school,” Mabel
added. “That's the other reason they called him Peter Rabbit, come to think of it. It was another pun. I think his last name was Hare.”

“Do you know what happened to the others, to Thomas and John?” Pike asked. “Are they still alive?”

“I'm sorry, I don't, Charlie. I stopped working at the school when I turned sixteen. I haven't thought about those little boys for years.”

As Pike got up to leave, the old woman spoke again, haltingly, as if trying to decide how much she could trust him. “I heard they found human remains back there, Charlie. Last spring. Behind the school.”

“Who found them?”

“Some parents from Pelican Lake whose children went missing a long, long time ago. Back in the seventies. They've been looking for them for years. They started digging out back and they found some buttons, same as the ones that were on everyone's school uniforms. They kept on going until they found bones. The elders said they were human, so they buried them in the graveyard at their reserve. The traditional way, four days later.”

“They're supposed to call the coroner when they find human remains so they can be examined by an expert,” Pike said, exhaling. “Did they do any forensic testing? Do they know whose bones they were?”

She looked at him sadly. “The elders don't need some white scientist to tell them what human bones look like, Charlie. They know what comes from an animal and what doesn't. Besides, it doesn't matter. We always bury our dead.”

Pike nodded slowly, his mind whirling. “How many did they find?”

“Sixteen, is what I heard.”

“Sixteen bones?”

“No, Charlie. Sixteen children.”

68

Inspector Ramirez pushed open the door
to the Chinese restaurant. Before he went to pick up his family at the train station, he wanted to try to contact Antifona Conejo, and there was only one way he could think of to do that. He no longer trusted anything that Manuel Flores had told him about his visions. Besides, whatever they were, they were hardly subconscious. Ramirez approached the same waitress who served him when he was there with Dr. Yeung.

“Excuse me, I'm looking for the ‘ask rice' woman. The old woman that was working here the other day?”

The woman looked puzzled and shook her head. “We have no old women employed in this restaurant. All our servers are young.”

Ramirez looked around the room. The waitresses were Cuban, wearing tight satin dresses with high collars. “She's Chinese. Maybe in her seventies or even older. She has a necklace made of gold coins around her neck.”

“Oh, I know who you mean now. There is an old woman with a
necklace like that. She runs the
kiosko
that sells paper dragons and Chinese kites. Out the front door, down the street, on your right. She comes in for green tea in the afternoon.”

Ramirez walked outside and saw the small kiosk. Red lanterns swung from its four corners. As he approached, he recognized her immediately. The cluster of coins still hung around her neck. Her face was creased with spiderweb lines.

“Dr. Yeung said you'd be back,” she said, and bowed to him. “She flew back to China this morning, but she left this for you.” She reached below the counter and handed him a package.

“You speak Spanish,” he said, surprised.

“I was born here, Señor.” She smiled. “My grandmother was Chinese.”

“I need to talk to the hungry ghost again. Can you help me?”

“Me?” She covered her mouth as she laughed. “Oh, no. I'm not an ‘ask rice' woman.”

“So the whole thing was a scam? The empty place setting, the chopsticks? But why?”

The old woman smiled. “You misunderstand the reason I laughed. I am not the ‘ask rice' woman. That's Dr. Yeung.”

Ramirez realized that when Dr. Yeung had been talking to the old woman, she'd been giving her instructions, paying for whatever was in the package. He opened it cautiously. He half expected to find a vial of white grubs inside. Instead, there was a paper airplane, a paper suitcase, and paper credit cards, as well as paper dresses, paper high heels, cardboard tubes of lipstick, even paper condoms.

There was also a note from Dr. Yeung, scripted in tidy calligraphy:

To the Chinese, there is no greater good than to bury stray bones. Lu Tung-pin, the Immortal, exorcises demons. You can ask the hungry ghosts to stay away, if you wish, by using these. You can
burn ghost money for a long life too, but you have to buy your own. The choice is yours.

“What is ghost money?” he asked the vendor.

“ ‘Hell money' is what some call it,” the old woman said. “But I like to think of it as heaven money. It's bad luck to give it to someone who's alive. It's funny, the company in China that makes it, their motto is to please customers in the next life. How much do you want? Ten billion? It only costs a few pesos. Heaven is cheap.”

Ramirez gave her a handful of domestic pesos and she handed him a stack of bills. One denomination was for a million dollars. On the back of the note was a picture of the Bank of Hell.

“Do you have any paper exit permits?”

The old woman laughed. “Ghosts don't need them. They come and go wherever they want, whenever they want. Time isn't something that concerns them, only us. Now, make sure to hold these in both hands when you put them in the fire. You have children? The little ones like the paper cars.”

69

Charlie Pike phoned Chief O'Malley from
the airport. The clerk insisted Pike use her phone, waving off his protests that the call would be long distance. “Don't worry about it, hon.”

“The Cuban authorities have been in touch with us already about Denise Labelle,” said O'Malley. “The RCMP are going down to pick her up and bring her back to Winnipeg for prosecution. As soon as Adam Neville heard she was in custody, that was enough for him to start talking about cutting a deal. The Crown says he has to plead guilty and agree to testify against her; otherwise, they can't force him to, because of spousal immunity. There's no evidence connecting her to any of the crimes without his evidence. It's a good deal for him. A few years in jail instead of life. He'll lose his medical licence, of course; that's part of the package.”

“Did he say why he did it? Why he framed Sheldon?”

“He claims he didn't know Denise had anything to do with these murders until he found her fingerprints on a compact in Gloria
TwoQuill's purse a few days before they went on their holidays. He says he was stunned. He left Cuba early to get away from her while he decided what to do. When he saw Maylene Kesler's body, he realized he could make it look like the Highway Strangler had killed her too, and maybe protect Denise while he sorted things out. He decided to frame Sheldon when the opportunity presented itself. He thought you'd jump at the chance to close these files. He didn't realize that you and Sheldon have a history.”

“Do you believe him? It could have been the two of them that did this together.”

O'Malley shrugged. “I expect they'll point fingers at each other. It worked for Homolka and Bernardo.”

“I still don't understand why she did it.”

“And you know what, Charlie? We probably never will. She's as crazy as a coot, from what I can tell. Killing those women so she could get her husband's attention? Frankly, the bigger problem it creates for us is with the dozens of murders she
didn't
commit. Any half-decent defence lawyer is going to point to her whenever the task force turns up a suspect. I'm already trying to figure out how many convictions in Manitoba are going to be opened up because of Neville's willingness to tamper with evidence.” He sighed. “Anyway, Charlie, it was good work you did up there. Well done, lad.”

Pike looked out the airport window as the bush plane taxied in. “I need to get going in a few minutes, Chief. My plane just landed. By the way, I think I found out the old man's name. I'm pretty sure it's Peter Hare. How did he make out while I was away? Is he all right?”

O'Malley smiled. “Now, don't you worry; I've been taking care of Mr. Hare, and I got him to tell me his name while you were gone. We found him a spot in palliative care. They've started him on some damn good pain relief. For the first time in a long while, he's feeling better.”

Pike was astonished. “How'd you get him into a hospital without any identification? And how did you find out his name?”

“Well, now, you know how persuasive I can be, Charlie. I told him I'd promised you I'd look after him, and that I had to do that properly or I'd lose face. He didn't have an OHIP card. I don't think he'd ever applied for health care. But your friend Chief Bill Wabigoon helped me work all that out. He called the Deputy Minister of Health and threatened to hold a press conference if an Ojibway elder froze to death because of some missing paperwork. The Odawa Friendship Centre is going to keep an eye on Mr. Hare too. They're going to send someone over to talk to him about filing an Indian residential school claim. Apparently, he's entitled to some money for each year he was there, although it seems he doesn't want to say much about what happened.”

“That means a lot to me,” Pike said. “You looking out for him.” He wiped his wet eyes with the back of his hand.

“It was the least I could do for you, son.”