The Devil's Dust (14 page)

C
hief Gallagher comes to on the couch in his living room. He opens his eyes and blinks at the ceiling. His mind is addled, groggy, thick with the booze he drank foolishly on an empty stomach. He is not a boozer, never was. Something he has turned to only and always at exactly the wrong time. He can't handle commotion, that's the thing. He has sought to control the weather, the temperature of things, since he was a boy in a home of chaos. And now the dial has moved right around to the other side, and sooner than later they will find out how he has been running this small operation. The books are a mess. Expenses have been padded, petty cash has been abused. He doesn't need foreign eyeballs rummaging through his business; he's been a sheriff for Christ's sake. Sat on the executive of the Oklahoma Sheriffs' Association, four thousand members. This place was supposed to be quiet, good fishing, better hunting, little more than a paid retirement. He saw himself moving into the little mayor's office. Sign that deal on the landfill with Celluci, and Jesus, the municipality wouldn't know what to do with the infusion of tax dollars. A hero, that's what they'd call him. A new recreation facility: Gallagher Complex. Closing on seventy years old and he rides in and saves a goddamned shit-ass town from closure, from a drug epidemic, from the clutches of hell itself.

He lifts up and swings his still-booted feet to the floor. He holds his head in his hands and steadies himself. A hero. Sure, and with money in his own pocket to burn. What was so wrong with a plan like that? Public service for a lifetime ought to result in something more than a paltry pension less deductions. Celluci had taken him on that fully-paid trip on a fishing boat out on the Gulf; yes sir, bobbing out there in the blue water with the sun and salt burning his eyes, catching kingfish, mahi, amberjack, barracuda shooting like silver muscle from the water. He didn't feel a bit guilty about accepting that gift, or others to come. He will pay for that trip one way or the other, anyway, for Celluci and the men he works for always get paid in the end.

It's the drugs, he thinks, the goddamned scourge of the lazy and the weak-minded.
Methamphetamine
. And now it has come to this small and isolated place, an island on dry land, and choices have been made, the wrong ones. On his watch. He has been so busy with his own plans, people will say he has lost touch with the community. He can admit that much, and it is a sin for any sheriff. Perhaps he should have hung up his badge years ago. He looks at Eddie Nolan sometimes and he doesn't know whether to be proud or jealous. He knows that Nolan waits for him to lead, to step out and show the way. Wear a big star on his vest like some goddamned vision of Wyatt Earp. But it doesn't work that way. He has tried to teach the kid as much as he can. Being a sheriff, being a chief, isn't about wearing a gun on your hip and throwing people in jail. It's about managing expectations. It's about delivering the illusion of safety and comfort, prosperity and peace. Knowing when to chew and swallow that mouthful of shit with a smile on your face. Is this the hill you're prepared to die on, he asks Nolan three times a week.

And anyway, he left the Midwest not for any of the reasons the townies here had whispered upon his arrival. No sir, just a story as old as the Bible. A man broken in half by a love turned sour, a man lifting his eyes to some new horizon. He thought of her all the time in those first long weeks and months adjusting to the Canadian winter that was beyond a definition you could put into words for the few friends he still talked with back home. He grew to respect and even embrace the cold, hard change that winter brought each year. Standing in the open, that biting ice and northern wind was strong enough to scour a man right clean, blow away the parts of himself he didn't want to keep fastened down.

It is rural men like Wade Garson that Gallagher best understands. The same version of a slightly different model found down in the small towns of Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa. Men born of desperate families boiling with bad blood like a poison in the DNA, rich histories of violence and bred-in disrespect for the law and order of so-called square society. That Garson's place has blown up, that it appears to be the centre of production for this new entry of methamphetamine, it is so utterly predictable that it makes Gallagher wonder. It is the intelligence of Wade Garson, not the criminal motivation, which he has to consider. What it boils down to, there is no way in goddamned hell that Wade Garson has the wherewithal to mastermind the production and quiet distribution of meth on his own.

The phone rings from the kitchen. He lifts himself and gains some new energy as he puts himself in motion. He grabs the receiver, speaks his last name.

“Chief,” Nolan says. “McKelvey's here with the investigator.”

“Does he look like an asshole?” Gallagher asks.

“Uh, no. Not really,” Nolan says. “She looks nice enough.”

“She?”

“Correct.”

Gallagher whistles. He spreads his thumb and forefinger across his moustache.

“Well, I'll be there in a tick,” he says. “I need a shower and a shave, throw on a clean shirt.”

T
he squad room in the police station is sombre, the mood palpably dour as McKelvey walks in. Finn Madsen lingers just behind, briefcase in hand. Mayor Danny Marko and Dr. Nichols are slumped in chairs, heads bowed, and Nolan stands against a wall, arms crossed at his chest. The room smells strongly of the fire, wet cinders and a thick taste of burnt metal that settles like a coating on the tongue. Dr. Nichols is still wearing the hip waders, mucky with a milky grey ash that he has tracked across the floor. He is a tall and wiry man of sixty-five, silver hair thinning across a shining dome, and his round face is daubed in soot like a kid who has been playing in the mud. He looks up and blinks from behind thick wire-rimmed spectacles.

“Mark Watson died early this morning,” the doctor says. “Septic shock settled in from the stabbing.” His voice, weary from the long night and this recent news, make the words sound more like a question, as though there might be some room yet for negotiation. “Scotty Cooper will face charges for killing his best friend.”

“Jesus,” McKelvey says. He is yanked back to the middle-of-the-night phone call, sitting in the darkness on the edge of the bed with his wife just waking, clawing her way from the last good sleep she will ever know, the death of his own boy, this chain reaction of drugs to blades to bodies. “Where are the parents?”

Nolan uncrosses his arms and stands tall, almost at attention. “I just got off the phone with them,” he says. “They've been at the hospital since he was admitted. The father said they were planning their first family trip to Mexico this March, and now they're planning a funeral.”

The room falls silent for a time. Madsen finally clears her throat and sets her briefcase on the floor.

McKelvey says, “I'm sorry. This is Inspector Finn Madsen of the OPP.”

The men stare for a moment, hardly hiding their indifference, and then introduce themselves and one by one they stand to shake her hand. There are no attempts at phoney welcome or small-town charm. This is uncomfortable for all, and the mayor, Danny Marko, looks as though he might cry. His eyes are red and welling. If McKelvey feels like an interloper, he can only imagine how awkward this must be for Madsen, cop or no cop. This is a small and closed room in a small and remote community.

“I know the Watsons well,” Marko says, sitting up. “This is insanity. Mark Watson was an
A
student six months ago. What the fuck is happening to this place. Excuse my language.”

He sits again, or more truthfully wilts to the chair.

“I hope I can help with that answer,” Madsen says. “I have some experience with methamphetamine in the rural context. I took an extensive training course offered by the Drug Enforcement Agency. They're cutting their teeth on this issue in small towns all over the middle west. ”

The men simply stare back at her.

“I sure hope your fancy courses can help us, miss. You'll have to excuse me, I need to go and help the Watsons with their arrangements,” Marko says. “They've got to bring their boy back home here to be buried. And little Scotty Cooper can head off down to Kingston to the penitentiary instead of going to college.”

The mayor takes his coat from a hook, pulls it on, and walks slowly to the door. Madsen moves aside to let him pass. Nolan follows the mayor and is about to close the door behind him when he hears the outer door open. Marko and Gallagher trade a few words and then the Chief comes in. He looks better, though not entirely well. His eyes are tired and his cheeks are red where a blade has just moments ago scraped away the silver stubble. The smell of half-digested booze has been masked with a good splashing of strong cologne, something manly, cedars and boot leather.

“Chief Gallagher,” he says, and extends a hand with his politician's smile.

“Inspector Madsen,” she says. “Finn Madsen.”

“I could use a coffee there, Eddie. Why don't you put on a fresh pot while we all sit down and meet Miss Madsen here.”

“
Inspector
Madsen will do just fine.”

She smiles to warm the comment a little, but the frosty edge remains.

If murder is still front-page news in the world's largest and most dangerous cities, then in a place like Ste. Bernadette it must be a seeming force of nature or
anti-
nature, a foreign organism blown in on the winds of something evil, capable of forever altering the landscape and social fabric. For one thing, it invariably means at least two families have come together in the most violent and base way within the circle of humanity, the effects of which reverberate for generations. McKelvey is thinking of this notion, prying his memory of the wildcat strike and the explosion at the utility shed, the death of that scab worker, how the old guys at the Station Hotel had mentioned his father was somehow implicated. And then Duncan, the night manager, had said something cryptic a few days later. He'd bumped into McKelvey at the Coffee Time and he said, “Don't believe everything George Fergus says about your old man there.” And that was it.

Now he re-focuses on the here and now.

“They'll need to be sent for proper analysis,” Dr. Nichols says, “and I'm no forensic pathologist, but those aren't human bones up there. No sir. Deer likely.”

Nolan's eyes flash. “So Wade Garson is still out there somewhere?”

“I didn't want to say anything in front of the mayor,” Dr. Nichols continues, soft-spoken and measured, the same voice he uses when explaining some untreatable illness to his elderly patients. “I couldn't find any other remains in there. The explosion and fire were intense, but you'd need heat sustained at 700 to 800 degrees for several hours in order to turn bone completely to ash. There'd be the femurs for one thing, the skull for sure. So, yes, I'd say there's a good chance Wade Garson wasn't in that trailer when it blew.”

Madsen makes notes in shorthand in a small notebook with a black cover, something that looks department-issued. McKelvey stirs sugar into his coffee and pictures the scene. Someone dragging a dead animal into the fire. No, it would be too risky. The animal being dumped in there prior to the explosion. Either way, it was obvious the carcass had been set there with the purpose of confusing the police, at the very least buying some time.

“He set the whole thing up,” Nolan says. “He knew we were circling in on him.”

“We don't know that,” McKelvey says. He wants to push farther, give a short lesson in the consequences of making assumptions too early in a case. God knows he learned that lesson the hard way many, many times. “We've got to stick with what we know, which isn't much. No living relatives of Garson we can call, check to see if he's made contact?”

Gallagher shakes his head. “Got an older brother, Hank, that's all. And he's doing time at Monteith. Worth a call, though. Nolan, you can add that to your list.”

“I'd like to speak with the family of this boy, Mark Watson,” Madsen says.

“I should be the one to do that,” says Gallagher. “They might be a little sensitive to an outsider during this difficult time.”

“I'll have to insist, Chief,” she says. “This is now a murder directly related to the sale of methamphetamine. You've already got a teen sitting in the detention centre for his meth-induced attack on Constable Nolan. Whoever manufactured the product, whoever sold it, may not be criminally responsible for Watson's murder. But they are responsible for introducing it to this community. The one thing I learned from my work with the DEA, we need to trace this back to the very root and cut it out. I'll start with the boy's family. Find out who he was hanging with, any new behaviours they noticed. And someone needs to get in to see the accused, this Scotty Cooper. Push him to reveal where the dope was coming from.”

“I'll be there when you meet with the Watsons,” Gallagher says. “And that's not negotiable.”

“Fine. I'd also suggest we get a bulletin posted on Wade Garson to all local and provincial police within a hundred kilometres. And it wouldn't hurt to talk to the principal at the high school, maybe the teacher that the kids think is the coolest of the bunch, most likely to have an ear to the ground.”

“I can do that,” McKelvey offers.

“Sounds like we've got a plan here,” Gallagher says. “I'll take you over to the Station Hotel, get you checked in. I'll get the Watsons on the phone and see if they're coming back to town tonight or tomorrow.”

“First thing, though, I'd like to visit the scene of the fire,” says Madsen, “and then go and see these bones for myself. Dr. Nichols, are you able to accompany us?”

The doctor nods. “You'll want some rubber boots.”