Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery (24 page)

Good man, Ted.

Lois had been calling the commissioner and asking when I would be home and did he have any messages for her from me.

Oh, yeah, and Edie had been around in the morning early. Nice woman when you got to know her. “I told her what a hero you were, very good with a shotgun.”

“You bastard.”

“I meant it! Anyway, she wondered if it would be a help if she took some time off and drove her dogs out there with a lot of hot water bottles and a nice duvet and a few soft pillows and I told her that was a hell of an idea.”

“Okay, okay. I got a camp to make.”

“One more thing,” Pengelly said. “The media. What we got so far is a woman named Rosie from the
Toronto Star
and guys from
Globe and Mail
and
Edmonton Journal
and Janet from
News North
, you know her, the one-woman bureau chief for what it takes us Mounties about sixty people to cover. Also, five separate CBC departments called, including “The Journal” and Jack Farr in Winnipeg, that wild guy with the Saturday radio show.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Over and out.”

In the tent again I drank tea, ate, settled in, all the time wondering if I was losing my touch. It wasn't just a hunch that had gone bad, it was a carefully considered plan. I'd been so sure William would show up and that somehow, somewhere, I'd learn something until now hidden from me—what, I didn't know. Something nagged on the edge of my consciousness; something that didn't jibe. In fact, several things didn't jibe.

From what I knew about him, he would not have contemplated leaving Johns with a broken leg to some uncertain fate. And he would not have left his dog chained and likely to starve, barring rescue by someone else. That wasn't all that didn't jibe, but the something else I just couldn't bring into focus.

I knew that night, settling for sleep, warm inside and out, that I had to change the plot tomorrow. To what? I still had a feeling deep in my gut that if I could find the place where William had spent his solitude for so many years, I would get some answers. If I didn't pretty soon, the situation might outwait me. I would become a pervasive Arctic legend like the Mad Trapper, a little old Inuk tottering around the Barrens muttering to himself who didn't have the sense to know when he was licked.

The next day I packed up everything in dawn light, traveled most of the way by snowmobile and then, just in case, went the last half-mile on snowshoes to my vantage point. Nothing had changed. Smokey was pacing less than the day before. I had a decision to make so I made it. I went back for the snowmobile and returned to run it down the hill to Smokey. He bristled and growled until he saw that I was the last man who'd fed him, then whined. I took out a bag of frozen meat. He set up an uproar that could have been heard for miles. I slit the package and tossed it to him. He wolfed it down. I made sure the last of it had disappeared, even the reddish-stained snow where I'd tossed it, then I went in talking softly and released him from the chain.

He bounded up the trail I'd left, presumably to look around for more visitors, then came back

My idea was that wherever William's Secret Garden, or cave, or hut, or whatever, was, Smokey had been there and would show some kind of recognition, if I could just catch him at it.

I began a dead slow tour by snowmobile around the pond, up and down the hills, in and out of patches of thicket. Then I made the circles wider, each one taking us closer to the smoke from the Burning Hills. Smokey mostly trailed along behind. Once he took off at high speed, me after him, and when I rounded a bend within sight of the tractor road for the first time, I could see he was losing a race with an Arctic hare. He just didn't seem awfully interested in any of the country we'd been covering. Maybe I'd given him too much to eat, I thought, taken the edge off his desire to please, if any—and then thought, Jesus, I've been away too long, to a husky happiness is a full stomach and the chance for more.

Well, I thought, if the way to a husky's heart is through his stomach I'll make him think I'm the greatest thing since the invention of frozen meat. I rummaged in my food box for another bag. He went crazy, jumping around. I thought he was going to rush in and take it from me. I'd seen huskies in that frame of mind, uncontrollable. I remembered everything No Legs had said about how smart this dog was, how easy to train, how he would stay when told to, just like a well-trained sheepdog.

“Stay!” I ordered.

He stayed, tail wagging, eyes on the chunk of meat.

I cut the bag and threw it to him. He caught it in midair and swallowed in three convulsive gulps, then stood there licking his lips.

I could see what a hell of a dog he was, why William wouldn't sell him with the rest of the team. But that didn't make me feel any less frustrated. “Come on,” I said. “Where is it?”

Smokey looked at me expectantly. As if he was waiting for me to put it in plain English, where was what?

And then I had what, it later became obvious, was the best idea I'd had in a week.

“Go home!” I ordered.

He turned immediately and headed toward the river. He could move faster than I could, because a rock or fallen tree or any other obstacle was just a leap and bounce for him. He even stopped a couple of times and looked back to make sure I was following, and then he'd bound on again. He led me along gullies and over ridges. When we came to the tractor road there were patterns left by big truck tires, I figured from the slight drift in them none less than a day old. He crossed in a few leaps with me after him, close now. A bit of a run through the bush on the west side of the road caused me to lose a little ground but when I came into the open he was waiting alongside a line of haphazard piles of great ice chunks along the Mackenzie's shore.

He turned north there, with me after him. Up the shore a bit he plunged into a small grove mainly of evergreens, a jumble of spruce and willow. It was indistinguishable from other groves along the bank. He disappeared from sight. I couldn't get in there with the snowmobile, so I got off and went in on foot, not even stopping for my snowshoes. I could hear him ahead of me as I broke off willows so I could get through, remembering that time long ago in an igloo near the Arctic shore, the old woman with a few handfuls of willow twigs trying to coax those twigs into enough fire to boil water for tea. It had taken about half an hour, and the lea was warm, not hot.

I had lost Smokey. All was quiet.

I called and heard a whine just ahead to my left. I went cautiously. I would have passed it a few feet away if I hadn't been sure the whine was close. It looked like just another close-knit clump of willows, until back among them I heard the dog again, this time in a low snarling growl that changed to a full-throated howl interspersed with barks, the way a wolf howls and barks at the same time.

I couldn't get through to where he was, standing up.

Then I noticed what seemed to be almost like the entrance tunnel to an igloo, a shallow runway in the snow under a cover of twisted willows. I didn't feel real good getting down on hands and knees and starting in, thinking I might meet Smokey coming the other way.

Then I saw a fragment of torn cloth, no bigger than my finger. Beyond it were other threads. Something had been dragged through here, but not in the last day or two. There was an inch or so of soft snow on the bed of the shallow indentation, enough to show Smokey's big paw marks.

It was not a cave, not a teepee, but looked like a little bit of both. Maybe a rock had been rolled out long ago leaving behind a shallow hollow, or a chunk of ice long ago had gouged a hole in the bank. Willows and spruce around it had been pulled in to form a sort of roof frame, which in summer could have been covered with a tarpaulin against the rain, although it was bare jumbled twigs and branches now. In a patch of bush around a city elsewhere in Canada this would have been what the neighbourhood kids called their cave, or their hut.

I pretty well knew it was William's place even before my eyes adjusted to the dim light and I could see what was in it now: the bodies of Albert Christian, I could tell by his black hair, moustache, beard, and of Benny Batten, I could tell by his thick cap of white hair. They were stretched out side by side a couple of feet apart, facing upward into the tangled branches above.

Smokey growled and showed his teeth. I spoke to him sharply and he retreated to a back corner, howling from time to time.

Christian had been shot in the face, three clean holes from his upper lip to his forehead. There was hardly any blood. Batten had been shot from behind, both in the head and the upper body. Those bullets must have spread after entry. Frozen blood was everywhere.

Both corpses were frozen solid, still in their parkas and heavy pants and mukluks, exactly as they would have been dressed when heading out with William last Saturday to look for a ride south on the tractor road.

Somewhere in this case, the story went, there was a half million dollars in cash. It isn't the kind of thing one carries in a wallet. Crouching between them, I searched carefully. It wasn't easy with their bodies rock hard, totally unyielding, but I found nothing in the pockets, no suspicious bulge anywhere. With difficulty, I rolled them over: nothing.

I sat back on my heels, considering. My first thought was of the radio. It was back on the snowmobile. So was my flashlight. I wanted a closer look around this place, in case there was a parcel or bag or knapsack or something that would hold a lot of money.

I started to crawl back out the way I had come when suddenly Smokey started to whine and dashed precipitously past me, literally shouldering me out of the way. I somehow didn't think it was because he was afraid to be left alone, but my head was too full to think about that much at all.

I kept on crawling, hearing his mad barking not far away. I was near where I'd first got down and started to crawl, and was noticing bits of cloth I hadn't noticed before, wondering how far William had had to drag the bodies, when something made me look up and see, not six feet away, legs.

“Keep on comin',” William said. “Just don't do nothin' funny.”

 

“I was such a stupid bastard,” William said. “I can't believe how stupid I was.”

It was night and we were in the Cessna, William in the pilot seat and I in the one alongside. Not that we were going anywhere. They were just the best seats available. Snow was falling so thickly that I could hardly see the tip of the propeller a few feet away. Smokey was on his chain outside, silent at last, once again a victim of the ups and downs of the dog's life; indulgence beyond one's dreams and then back to reality, a chain leading through a blizzard to a snowbank with a dog inside, curled up snug and warm. William had possession of the only gun currently in sight, his rifle. It wasn't pointed at me but was leaning against the instrument panel near his hand. I knew nothing of his intentions, now or ever. We had eaten and had a good shot of rum and snow. With our second drink I had a fleeting impulse to raise my glass to his and say, “To us,” but decided to save that for the movie.

“Yeah, stupid,” he repeated.

“In what way?” I was really curious about his first choice.

He just looked at me.

At first, over by his secret place after I crawled out of the tunnel, he had held his gun on me constantly, so tense that I had a feeling of imminent danger. Finding me there had not been in his plan. The first thing he said after his, “Just don't do nothin' funny,” had been to ask how I'd come to find this place.

I gave the brief version, flying out and losing his trail in the caribou herd, then flying out with a snowmobile and finding it again.

The mention of the caribou trail brought his first ghost of a smile, confirming that he'd thought that a pretty bright idea.

Then it was back to the business at hand. He waved his gun at me and said to shut up and start walking. I walked in front of him up the bank to the tractor road. “Walk south,” he said, which I did. He stayed watchfully maybe fifteen feet behind me. Once when a big rig could be heard approaching he waved me into the bush. We crouched out of sight a few feet apart while three tractor-trailers thundered past, a storm of swirling snow marking their passage. It occurred to me that if he decided to kill me now, I likely couldn't stop him.

Half a mile on, off the road and out of sight, was a new Skidoo Elan. Still holding the gun on me, he steered the machine one-handed back to the road and drove dead slow behind me back the way we'd come, the gun handy across his thighs, right down to where I'd left my snowmobile. He seemed undecided for a minute, then tossed me my snowshoes.

“Where are we heading for?” I asked.

“The Cessna,” he said. At the same time he saw the radio. “Who else knows you're out here?”

“Every Mountie detachment in the Northwest Territories,” I said. Then I had an idea that if I told him we had a call-schedule, he might order me to call in and say everything was okay. If I had that chance, maybe I could say something that would alert Pengelly, such as that Harold Johns sent his regards.

Of course, there was always the chance that Pengelly, being Pengelly, would say something incredulous that would tip William to the trick and go boom with the gun. But it was a hope, the only one I could think of offhand,

For a minute or two I thought I was going to get the chance.

“You got a call-schedule?” he asked.

I said yes, looked at my watch, and said, “In about five minutes.”

I think he definitely considered the idea of holding the gun on me while I made reassuring noises into the radio, but if so he rejected it instantly. “Forget it,” he said. “You could pass some kinda signal. Now shut up and walk.”

I walked. He followed on his machine. I thought of the pond as I'd first seen it, the snow empty of any signs of traffic. When we reached the western ridge above the pond, he stopped, staring, and convulsively shoved his parka hood back off his face. Snow had just begun to fall, flecking his long black hair parted in the middle and hanging down both sides of his head. His mouth had fallen slack below the drooping moustache. He turned his gaze slowly from one end of the pond to the other, taking in all the signs of recent activity: the rough runway Stothers had made for his takeoff, the trail my snowmobile had made when I drove down the hill to carry Johns to the Beaver, the path in to the Cessna's hiding place.

After a long, long look he turned his gaze to me.

“Tell me all about it.”

Standing there on the hillside in the growing storm of windblown snow, I told him about Stothers bringing me out on Sunday and glimpsing the snowmobile headlight, about coming back in the Twin Otter the next day, following his track and then switching to the other snowmobile track going the same way. Billy Bob's shot at me that got the radio instead. Killing Billy Bob. Camping by his body. Going on the next day to find the Cessna. Stothers and Pengelly responding to my radio silence by coming out to look for me. The airlift of Johns. Pengelly taking Billy Bob's body back.

William took it all in without his eyes ever leaving my face.

At the end he sighed. In another minute he said, “So Billy Bob is dead. I like that part best. And Johns is okay?”

I said yes.

“Jesus,” he said.

In silence, we moved the last hundred yards or so through the growing blizzard, made camp in the Cessna, ate and drank, moved to the seats at the front of the aircraft and started to talk. William obviously had been thinking it all over.

“What made you stay around after Pengelly left with that son-of-a-bitch's body?” he asked.

“I figured you'd be back I couldn't see you leaving Johns with a broken leg, or leaving your dog.”

He nodded, even smiled, shaking his head. “That's me,” he said. “Stupid. I thought I'd come back here, probably find Billy Bob here, kill him, lay him in with the other two bastards, take the money, and get out of here, somehow, either right out of the North or someplace safe. In a day or two, or as soon as I could, I'd phone Search and Rescue where to find Johns and Smokey. No Legs would've looked after Smokey for me.”

I looked across the dark at him. There was a full moon above the snow. Even with the cloud cover the night was not totally dark “Billy Bob might have killed you first,” I said. “And then Johns, to shut him up. He'd figure nobody was going to find the Cessna until spring, if then. He might've shot your dog, too, just for the fun of it.”

William shook his head a little impatiently. “He might have thought of all that, even planned on it, but he wouldn't have done a thing right then, not a chance. Not until he had his money for killing my father. I don't know what those bastards were paying him, but all I'd have to say is that they weren't far away, and had the money, and I'd take him to them. Then at my . . . at my place . . . when he was crawling in there I'd get him from behind, no warning at all, like he killed my father. Maybe years from now somebody would find them, or maybe never.”

Thinking of that secret place of his, I'd bet on the never. He'd had it all thought out. He might have gotten away with it. A guy with that much money could get away with a lot.

“How did you manage Christian and Batten?”

“I maybe wouldn't have even thought of it. But when I said they should get the hell out of here, Johns couldn't fly them with a broken leg anyway, Batten said just as casually as anything, ‘We're waiting for Billy Bob.' Christian wouldn't have been that dumb. I could tell by his face he thought Batten was an idiot for telling me. He was right. I'd had an idea they'd been connected somehow with my father's murder—who else would want him dead? But I couldn't figure out how. When they said Billy Bob was heading this way, then I knew. I didn't let on, but I was thinking Bonner knew how to get here. He'd been the only one of the three who could know a day ahead that my father was being flown out, the only one who could get to Billy Bob fast and make the deal that he'd kill my father, the only one who could tell Billy Bob how to get here to pick up his money. That's when I made up my mind.

“They were worried about being trapped in here for weeks until Johns could fly. I told them they could make it on the tractor road, stop a rig and get out that way, and that when Billy Bob got here he and I would follow the same way, better two guys hitching a ride than four. I took them over there early Saturday morning. We got to the other side of the road, the river side. Batten had a gun. Christian didn't, but had the money. They were a few feet ahead of me, facing the other way. We were talking about where we'd meet afterwards in Edmonton. I kept thinking, even if they didn't pull the trigger, these two guys killed my father.

“I got Batten from behind, three shots, and when Christian turned I shot him head on. Four shots.”

“Looked like three to me,” I said. “I missed the last one.”

We sat for a few minutes. I was thinking that apart from Bonner the case was all wrapped up if I could get out of here alive. I don't know what William was thinking.

“I take it that when you killed Christian and Batten you became, ah, their beneficiary. You wind up with all the money now.”

“Except a few thousand I took just in case. Used some of it for that snowmobile in Wrigley,” he said. “Walk in, lay down cash. That part felt good, the only part.”

“Where's the rest of it?”

He shrugged. “Can't do you any good, knowing. It's deep in the snow right where I fastened Smokey's chain. That's why I left him here.”

Another puzzle solved. “Wonder he didn't dig it up and eat it.”

“Even a husky can't eat a steel tool box.”

So we sat. I still didn't know what he had in mind for me. It didn't really bear thinking about, so I didn't think about it.

Meanwhile, there were still things that bothered me. “What made you tell those guys how to find this place?” I asked. “Even draw them a map how to get here.”

“Well, I was part of them then,” he said. “And I always thought this was a wonderful place. It started when I was a kid and we were all still at home before my dad became a big shot, and one summer he gave me an old Viking five-horse motor he picked up somewhere and I put it on a square-end canoe we had. That summer I started traveling around in this kicker canoe for a week or two at a time and found that place on the river. Just loved it, fishing, sleeping, fooling around. Being alone. Thinking maybe I'd quit school and be a trapper . . .”

He said that at first he'd stayed close to the river getting his place liveable. When he started exploring a bit, he found the pond. Saw some ducks heading that way and went to have a look where they were going in. “I remember thinking what a neat place it was, just long enough to get a light plane down and take off again, and if I was ever a pilot and in trouble I'd remember it. And then once months ago in Inuvik we started talking about what we'd do if we were ever going to be busted, and knew about it and could get away—”

I interrupted. “Did you have any reason to think that might happen?”

“We'd often hear rumors and wonder for a while until they didn't come to anything. Even a couple of weeks ago, we heard one from Edmonton that some woman cleaner in the Mountie office picked up and told her brother, for Christ sake, a dealer, that a hit was coming somewhere in the North. He passed it along.”

Hard to guard against, a woman with a druggie brother, trying to protect him. But if such information, or even rumor, was out and around, that's how it would get to Morton. He was Mr. Metis to a lot of people, the guy with all the connections in the North, nobody knowing at that time that William might be one of those hit.

“Anyway, that time last fall when we were talking about what we'd do in a bust, there was talk about where to go that would be safe, and where we could meet later if we had to separate. I said, ‘Hey, I know the place!' They never listened to me much ordinarily, but right away they were all ears. I drew them the map. I remember Bonner copied it, just in case. I could see it all later, that would give him what he could tell that fuckin' Billy Bob. But at the time it was just planning, just in case . . .”

He stopped there. I didn't actually see William begin to weep, but I saw him wipe his cheeks with his hand.

“Then a week ago last Sunday I got this message that my father wanted to see me at the Mackenzie, and I went, and right away he lit into me, insisting that I was part of a gang that was going to be busted—”

“And you were denying it?”

He wiped his cheek again, his face turned away from me.

“I never could face my father when he was like that. Even over small things I never could say, ‘Dad, you're right, I'm sorry,' I always tried to bluster it out, but I've never seen him like that. He was crying! He knew! And I was denying it, and he hit me and I tried to hold his wrists so he couldn't, and we were sort of shoving each other, and then he went down and hit his head, and just stayed out. I called the ambulance and got him to the hospital and stayed a while, but then I went, it was one or two in the morning, and told Bonner what Dad had said to me.”

He wiped his eyes another time but his voice was steady enough. “Stupidest thing I ever did in a life of being stupid. Of course, this was what we'd made the plan for, last fall, a bust. Bonner went right to Christian with it. That night it looked as if Dad was going to die. We didn't know where he'd got the information. If he was the only one who knew about us for sure, it would die with him. I just wanted him to live. If he came to, I'd tell him the truth, I'd ask him to help me, I'd try to be the kind of son he wanted. But Monday noon when Doc Zimmer said Dad was conscious now and again and might recover, others had, therapy, all that, might be flown out to Edmonton, that would be, I guess, when Christian would phone and lay on the fuckin' gunman, just in case he was needed. And I think told Bonner what to do if the worst came to the worst. He'd have it all set up. Christian was that kind, a big deal planner. That's why we did so well, I guess.