The Calling (14 page)

She didn't correct him. He released her hand,
and Hazel found herself staring into the man's eyes.
He was in his early fifties, younger than his brother,
but he'd thickened. Thirty years was enough time
for a person to change completely. In the midseventies,
when she'd last seen this man, she was
thirty pounds lighter herself. And married. 'Were
you in touch with her very much?' she asked.

'We kept in touch through email,' he said. 'Once
a week, or so. And before you ask: no. There was
nothing in her emails last week or the week before
to even suggest she knew her time was running out.
Or that she was planning anything like this, if it
was actually planned.'

'Can you see your mother asking someone for
help ending her life?'

'I don't know what any person might become
capable of once they know they're dying, Inspector.
I suppose it's possible. It doesn't
feel
like her to me,
but I haven't lived near my mother for fifteen
years.'

'Did you see her much?'

Dennis Chandler lowered his head slightly. 'No,'
he said. 'It was emails and a package a few times a
year. I hate to say it, but it was enough. For me.'

Hazel saw Howard Spere standing in the grass
near the road talking with Ray Greene. The two
men started toward her. 'What would she send you?
Birthday gifts?'

'Christmas too. The usual. I have a six-year-old
daughter. She'd buy something here in town and
wrap it up in butcher paper and send it out.
Although the last couple of years, we'd get
something from whatever online store she'd
shopped at with her credit card. There wouldn't
even be her handwriting on the package. And a
computer-generated card in the box with her
message.' He leaned in a little, and Hazel held
her hand out behind her to warn Spere and Greene
not to come any closer. 'You want to know the
truth? My mother was lazy. She took the easy way
out. That's why she could convince herself it was
okay to do what she did with your father – she
would have told herself it was preferable to suffering
alone. And so, yes, maybe my mother turned
into the kind of person who would have asked
someone to help her end her life. I don't know.'

'May I ask you another question?'

'Sure.'

'Did your mother send you anything recently? A
gift?'

'If she did, I haven't got it yet. But there's no
birthdays in our household after October, and
Christmas is still a month and a half away ...'

'I'm sorry for your loss,' she said, and she put her
hand on his shoulder. 'I'm glad we talked.'

Dennis Chandler nodded to her, and passed on
his way. Her two colleagues were standing
right behind her. 'Who was that?' said Ray
Greene.

'Delia's younger son.'

'
That's
Dennis Chandler?'

'Yeah.'

'That kid could skin a hardball. What did he tell
you?'

'He wasn't her biggest fan. He said she was lazy
around birthdays and Christmas. That she had her
gifts shipped directly off the web.'

'I'd call that convenience, not laziness,' said
Spere.

'Howard, will you think in a straight line for
once? That duvet cover Delia bought on
Bidnow ...'

Spere blinked a couple of times. A stream of
people flowed past on either side of them, like
water around a stone. 'I'll have one of my guys find
out who the seller was. I presume he'll know where
the item was shipped.'

'You "presume"?' sneered Greene.

The big man picked a fleck of something out of
the corner of his mouth. He fixed Ray with a
hooded gaze. 'Beg your pardon, Ray?'

'I'm just saying. I thought you guys weren't
supposed to presume anything.'

'It's a figure of speech, Ray.'

'Fine.'

'Are you boys done?' said Hazel. They turned to
her. 'What were you loping over here to tell me?'

'Good news, sort of,' said Spere. 'The RCMP up
in Gimli sent me some digital images of the Maris
murder. It's our guy for sure. He did her mouth.'

'But he cut her head in half.'

'He did, but they took the crime-scene pics and
put her back together digitally. She looked like she
was whistling.'

Hazel unconsciously pursed her lips. 'Whistling.'

'Or blowing a kiss.'

'Good Christ,' said Greene. The three of them
began walking back to Hazel's car.

'We have to find the rest of these victims now,'
she said. 'Gimli makes four in eleven days.'

'He's working quickly,' said Greene. 'If Gimli is
3 November, the Atlookan murder 9 November,
Delia the twelfth, and Michael Ulmer 14 November,
then he's killing almost every three days.'

'If you're right, then we've missed one between
Gimli and Pikangikum,' said Spere.

'So you presume.'

Spere ignored him. He'd taken out his notebook
and was writing dates furiously. 'There'll be another
one within five hundred kilometres east of
Chamberlain, anytime now.'

Hazel stopped beside her car. 'Howard, I want
some spare personnel from Mayfair. Quietly. I
want everyone we can get on this – phones, email,
police frequencies.' She tapped Greene's notebook.
'Ray, get a map and start triangulating towns
around these times and distances. If he's killing
every three days or so, and he's coming from the
west, we should be able to figure out how many
more visits he's planning on making. We have to
get to him before he's done.'

'I'll do it right away.'

He began sprinting for his car. Spere was standing
in front of her, unused to action. 'As for you,
get someone in to Delia's Bidnow.com account.
That duvet cover was not for her.'

Lake Superior looked like the ocean from twelve
thousand feet. 'It's about the size of Nova Scotia,'
said the pilot into her microphone. Wingate picked
her up in his headphones. 'It's a biii-iig cuppa
water,' she said.

Wingate had stopped gripping the armrest sometime
back around the northern shore of Manitoulin
Island, but he wasn't getting used to it. The plane
was an old Cessna 180 and it had room for the
pilot, Wingate and a briefcase, although the pilot
claimed she could carry five people in the craft, if
she had to. Her name was Brenna. 'Luckily, it's just
the two of us, or I might have trouble getting
all the way there on one tank,' she'd said. 'Red
Lake's just on the edge of my range.'

'But we'll get there.'

'Even if we have to glide down to the runway, I'll
getcha there.'

He had to admit it was occasionally pleasant
being in a plane the size of a minivan, although he
could feel the bumps as if he were riding a bicycle
down a potholed road. And Brenna kept him fairly
distracted, pointing out towns like Wawa and
Rossport as they passed over them. 'You can
make out the geese down there,' she'd said over
Wawa.

'What?'

'They've got a couple huge goose statues down
there. You can see 'em from up here.' He couldn't
see that far, but he took her word for it. It was going
to end up being a four-hour flight, and he needed
all the distraction he could get. There was no talking
but through the intercom system wired into
their headsets. The plane was so loud he couldn't
hear himself sneeze. They were approaching a town
called Marathon.

'How much longer?'

'You gettin' bored of my stories, hon?'

'Not at all.'

'Check this out,' she said, and she put the plane
into a sudden dive and then pulled it up again.
Wingate almost vomited.

'God,' he said.

'You can drive this little shitbox like a race car.
It'll do anything.'

'Please don't do that again,' he said.

She put her hand on his knee. 'Oh, come on – I
could crash this thing, and we'd jump up and throw
the pieces over our shoulders.'

'Well, I'd just the same—'

'—rather not, I know. Everyone says the same
thing. Don't worry, Officer Wingate, this thing is
safe as houses. I'll have you into Red Lake in one
piece, I promise.'

Tuesday 16 November, 3 p.m.

The ferry from Berens Landing to the reserve went
over three times a day: once in the morning, once
in the mid-afternoon, and once around suppertime.
Wingate bought a newspaper and a bag of chips
and waited inside the small, sour-smelling
terminal. His pilot had been instructed to stay in a
motel in Red Lake and wait for him to come back.
DI Micallef was going to have him in the air twice
in one day; there was no time to wait. The date on
the newspaper he was reading was 13 November,
the day after they found Delia Chandler; the
locality was too small to support a newspaper that
came out more frequently than once a week. He
opened it and scanned the news pages, knowing
he would find nothing about what had happened in
Port Dundas. Next week's paper would have
nothing on it either. As Hazel had said, the
Belladonna was ensuring that none of those who
mourned his victims would have cause to know
each other.

He'd been driven here in a squad car out of Red
Lake. A surly constable named Jackman had been
assigned to him, and he whipped along the highway
at 140 kilometres an hour just to limit the
amount of time he'd have to spend with a cop from
'Toronto-way'. That Port Dundas was a full three
and a half hours north of Toronto made no difference
to this guy, and Wingate kept his mouth shut
about the fact that he'd only just been transferred
from the city. Jackman kept his transmitter on the
whole time, listening in on his station's frequency
but not commenting to Wingate on anything they
both heard. The only thing the constable said of
any note to Wingate was to watch his wallet once
he got to the reserve. 'No compunction on these
guys,' he said, 'cop or no.' He told Wingate to call
his dispatch when he was heading back to this side
and someone would be there to meet him. Some
lucky person, no doubt, thought Wingate.

There was nothing in the paper to keep his
attention, so he went out to where the ferry would
tie up. He and two other men were the only people
waiting. He noticed them noticing him. It was cold
by the Berens River, a hard slant wind driving the
water up against the pilings. It made him think of
Lake Ontario in late fall, the way the wind over the
lake could push you down the boardwalk. That was
a place he didn't think he'd be able to walk again
anytime soon.

'You being posted?' said a voice behind him. It
was the younger of the two men. 'You coming to
live with us?'

Wingate turned to face the man. The second
one was still standing over by the door to the
terminal, smoking. 'I thought the reserve had its
own police service.'

'It does, but they always send us one solid citizen
from Red Lake or Sioux Lookout. Keep an eye on
us.'

'I'm from Port Dundas. I'm visiting.'

'You're in costume for a visit, officer.' He leaned
in to look at Wingate's badge. '
Detective
, I should
say.'

Wingate debated how much he should tell this
man, then thought if he gave anyone cause to
doubt his honesty, this whole trip could be for
nothing. The cover story Detective Inspector
Micallef had suggested he use seemed particularly
ill-advised. He told the man he'd come to learn a
couple of things about Joseph Atlookan. There'd
been a suicide on a reserve near Port Dundas, and
they wanted to rule out foul play.

'You talking M'njikaning?' said the man.
Wingate nodded. 'Nobody died in that community
by their own hand for over a year. And if they did,
what would it have to do with us?'

'My superior just asked me to come and ask a
couple of questions.'

'You came fifteen hundred kilometres to ask
some questions about a sad old dead Indian, huh?
You think he killed himself because someone drank
Lysol out in M'njikaning last Christmas?' Wingate
scuffed his feet. The man had his hands on his hips.
'We got a right to know what's going on in our own
house, you know?'

'I understand,' said Wingate.

The man fell to silence, looking at Wingate
without looking away. It seemed to him then that
the best move might be just to head back to Red
Lake and figure out another way to get the information
they needed about Atlookan. A morgue
photo would do if they could get their hands on
one. The man interrupted his thoughts. 'Joe was
my uncle on my mum's side,' he said. 'What do you
know about him that I don't?'

'I don't know anything,' said Wingate quickly. 'I
honestly don't.'

'But you think there's something on the other
side of this river you should look at.'

'I guess I do.' He offered his hand and the man
took it. 'I'm Detective Constable James Wingate. I
don't mean to give you the impression that I'm
skulking around. And if you're his nephew, then
maybe I should be talking to you anyway.'

'I'm one of his nephews,' said the man. 'Joe had
five brothers, four sisters, and nine kids of his own.
There's no shortage of Atlookans on the reserve
and every one of them knew him.'

'He was sick,' said Wingate.

'For years,' said the man. 'He had cancer. My
uncle used to get up every hour all night to smoke.
We figure he smoked two packs a day and the best
part of a third when he should have been sleeping.
But he made it to eighty-three. Then he'd had
enough.'

'Why do you think he'd had enough? Why did
he kill himself now?'

The man shrugged. 'He'd tried everything, I
guess. Wife was dead, thought he was turning into
a burden for his kids. He was in pain.'

Wingate had taken out his notebook and shown
it to the man, and the man had nodded. Wingate
wrote down 'tried everything'. The man standing
behind them whistled.

'Ferry's coming. I'm going to get a cup of tea for
the crossing. If you want, we can talk more on the
boat. But I don't want to be snowed by any of your
cover stories, officer. If I talk to you and it leads you
somewhere, I want to know.'

'Agreed,' said Wingate. 'I might not be able to
tell you everything I know right away, but I'll try
to keep my promise.' The man turned with his
hands in his pockets and started back toward the
terminal building. 'I didn't get your name,' said
Wingate.

'I'm Joe Atlookan,' said the man. 'And there's
six more of me on the other side of the river.'

By the time the boat left the dock, twenty-five
more people had shown up. The ferry was so regular
that there was no reason to get there early unless
someone had dropped you off. It was a small vessel,
with room for perhaps fifty. The reserve had all the
services and amenities the community needed,
including a school and a clinic, so the ferry wasn't
used as a daily conveyance for more than a handful
of people who worked off the reserve.

Wingate was much more conscious of his conspicuous
presence now than when only two people
had been looking at him. Getting on, he'd
proposed to Joe Atlookan that they talk in a more
private setting once they'd got to the reserve, and
Atlookan had nodded and left him sitting more or
less alone at the back of the ferry.

Halfway across the river, the other passengers
began to lose interest in him, and Wingate allowed
himself to raise his head and observe the people
around him. He didn't know a lot of native
people, and like a lot of city folk, his experience of
natives was limited to poverty and addiction.
There were community centres and native health
centres in Toronto, and on occasion, he'd had a
reason to go to them while on the job. But the
atmosphere in these places was so sad that he'd
found he couldn't look people in their eyes. He
wondered if he'd feel the same ugly pity in
Pikangikum as he did in Toronto. He'd soon find
out.

The reserve was a collection of about four hundred
houses and some larger buildings, surrounded by
trees. Joe Atlookan waited for him to get off the
ferry and took him to his mother's house, a small
wooden structure with a wood-burning stove in the
middle of the main room. The small house was
redolent of roasting meat. Wingate sat at the
woman's kitchen table clutching the cup of tea
she'd insisted he take when he came through the
door. He listened to the son explain to the mother
in Ojibway what Wingate presumed were the main
points of the reason he'd come all this way. As she
listened, she kept her eyes on Wingate, who felt
compelled to sip the too-hot tea.

When Joe was finished talking, his mother came
and sat beside Wingate. 'Are you hungry?' she
asked.

'I'm okay, thank you.'

Her son said a couple more phrases to her and
she got up, opened the oven door and removed a
roaster. She ladled out a couple of shallow dishes of
stew and put them both on the table. 'My son says
it's an hour out here from Red Lake, an hour's wait
at the landing, and then forty minutes by ferry, so
you must be hungry even though you say you are
not. So first you eat.'

'Your son has a talent for catching me in
untruths.'

She cast a look behind her as her son came to
the table. 'He means he is a police officer and he is
careful, Ma. He's fine.' Joe reached into a cloth-covered
basket and took out a slice of white bread
and passed a second one to Wingate. 'Her name's
Mary,' he said. 'You catching on to the naming
trend here? I got a mother and two aunts named
Mary. My mum's the only one who kept it, the
others went by their middle names. All four of my
remaining uncles are called Joe something. They
all go by the
something
. The man you came here to
ask questions about, he was the last Joseph
Atlookan of his generation.'

Wingate turned to Mary, who stood in the
middle of the kitchen folding and refolding a hand-cloth.
'Were you close with your brother?'

'I was very close with him.'

'Your son told me that he'd "tried" everything.
To help with the cancer. What kinds of things did
he do?'

'Joseph tried any medicine he could get his
hands on, but he put no faith in giving up his
poison. A smoke in one hand, a pill in the other.
There was no medicine could help my brother.'

'So you think he just gave up?'

'You want more stew?'

Wingate looked into his plate and saw he'd
wolfed down the portion she'd given him. He
hadn't had a home-cooked meal in more than a
month. 'It's absolutely incredible. What is it?'

'Caribou,' she said. 'I have a freezerful of it.'

'I'd love some more,' he said.

She gave him another serving, and this time Joe
Atlookan just passed him the bread basket with a
half-smile. He slowly pulled away the cloth
covering the bread for Wingate like he was drawing
aside a curtain. He was looking Wingate in the
eyes. 'I guess he gave up,' Mary Atlookan said. 'I
don't know. They just came and took him away.'

'Who did?'

'Some men from the band council.'

'There's nothing unusual about that,' said Joe.

'Was anyone with him the day he died?'

Mary considered the question for a moment. 'He
lived alone. But he still has two daughters here in
town. You could try one of them.'

After the meal, Joe placed a phone call to one of
his cousins. Fifteen minutes later, they were holding
fresh cups of tea in an identical house on
the other side of the reserve. Wingate wrote the
woman's name in his pad: Wineva Atlookan, an
unmarried daughter of the dead man. She was in
her fifties. She'd been with her father the morning
of his death. 'Did anyone visit him that day?'
Wingate asked.

'One of his doctors from over the river,' she
answered.

'One of his doctors?'

Joe put his tea down with a dull clunk on the
kitchen counter. 'My uncle was addicted to New Age
crap as much as he was to his cigarettes. I think there
was a new quack in town every three days.'

'Did you meet this man?'

Wineva shook her head. 'Not really. Dad said he
was coming and he would not make medicine with
him unless he was alone. So I waited until there
was a knock at the door. Dad insisted I go out the
back, but I caught a glimpse of the guy.'

Wingate turned to a new page. 'What can you
tell me about him?'

'He was thin as a rail,' said Wineva. 'He had on
a long black coat with a cape that was tied around
his throat. He might have been holding a hat. I
didn't really see his face, though.'

'Did you hear him say anything?'

'Just "Hello Joseph", like he knew my dad from
somewhere.'

Wingate's hand was shaking. First contact, no
matter how remote, was a huge step forward. Their
man had just begun to emerge from the mist.
'Anything else? Rack your mind, Miss Atlookan,
this could be important.'

'
Now
there's something you're not telling me,'
said Joe. 'What is it?'

Wingate closed his notebook instinctively. 'I'll
keep my promise,' he said. 'But I need you to trust
me now.'

'You think my uncle was murdered.'

He looked back and forth between the dead
man's two relatives. The danger of the truth was
this: he could offer it as a sign of fellowship, but if
word spread, it could scupper their advantage. 'I
don't know what happened to him,' he said at last.

'Do
you
think he was murdered?' repeated Joe
Atlookan, holding Wingate's gaze. 'That's all I
want to know.'

'I think it's a possibility.'

Wineva Atlookan stumbled back into one of the
kitchen chairs and sat down. 'Why? Who would
murder an old, dying man?'

He pulled out the chair beside hers and took her
hand in his. 'Do you think the men who came to
take your father's body might have photographed
the scene?'

'And who cuts their own throat?' she said to herself.

'Have you been back to your father's house?' said
Wingate.

She was still staring down at the tabletop, then
she seemed to notice her hand in the officer's
and she removed it. 'My father didn't pay this man,
whoever he was,' she said. 'Not in cash. When we
went back into the house, my father's Bible was
gone. I didn't think anything of it – it's not uncommon
here to barter for services. I thought to
myself, he's given up. He paid for his last doctor
with something he thought he wouldn't need any
more. But now, if you say he was killed, did this
man steal my father's Bible?' She stood, agitated.
'What kind of person is this? Who would come to
our home and do such a thing?'