The Shaman's Knife (26 page)

In the chanting and dancing and suddenly fierce movements and cries depicting his passage to Sedna's presence, the words and incantations he spoke or sang would carry listeners and watchers along in their own trances until they felt they were watching Jonassie with Sedna, the fish-woman goddess of all the seals and sea animals, who has the power to cast out dangerous spirits and return an afflicted person to normal functioning on earth.

When I came in from the tundra I walked up the hill to Jonassie's home. This time I was going to see Jonassie uninvited. I wondered if he could or would tell me anything new and useful to the murder investigation. He had been forthcoming before. We sat in the room where he worked, under a hanging unshaded bulb. Again armed with tea out of his microwave, I asked, “Is there anything specific to the case that has made Davidee's father suicidal?”

“Perhaps,” he said, “but nothing that he said in words. During my activities, he was downcast and silent. I thought several times that he was bursting to speak, but did not. I asked Debbie to let you know what we had tried to do, to bring him some peace, just so that you would know in case anything happens later.”

That was all. After a lengthening silence I rose to go. He walked me to the door. There, with his hand on the latch, he said with a smile, “As you know, my brother, Father Lovering, does not approve of shamanism. Before he flew out just a little while ago, he renewed an old, old argument between us. He was trying as he always does to convince me that I am wasting my time, my life, when even now I could, like him, become a priest in an internationally recognized and accepted religion, instead of obeying crude tribal concepts based on an old and unverified set of superstitious beliefs.”

“How did you answer?”

His eyes were merry in that huge leonine head. “I told him that no religion on earth depended on old and unverified superstitious beliefs as much as Christianity does.”

It had been a busy night. I was tired. When I trudged back down the hill from his place, the shamanistic experience I had imagined filled my mind and weighed heavily in my body, bringing no knowledge with it—until, near the detachment, I saw someone lurking in the shadows. Debbie.

“Byron and I slipped out to take our baby to his place,” she said hurriedly. “You know about the shaman and my father?”

“Yes. Bouvier passed on your message . . .”

“There's something you should know, I think. The shaman could not get through to Sedna. He kept trying for hours, singing his pleas through his helping spirits before at the end, near dawn, he gave up and said this to all of us there: ‘I have failed, for a particular reason. I am being told that in this house, perhaps with the man I am trying to help, there is an object that does not belong here, maybe as a result of theft, and there is no more I can do until that object, whatever it is, is revealed and returned to its owner.'”

I was close enough that I saw Debbie shudder as she spoke. “It was getting light when he said that, and then left . . .”

“You have any idea what the object he referred to could be?”

“None! I have racked my brains! I must go, I mustn't be seen talking to you!”

Then she ran, not toward her own home but up the hill toward Byron's place.

At the hotel Thomassie and I ate the leftovers Margaret provided. He had been put into my four-bed room for the night, which suited me fine. We took a couple of cans of ginger ale to my room to go with the rum I'd bought in Inuvik.

I had one drink and then another, but I wasn't good company. Too tired. Confused both about the shaman's visit and the limited amount he had told me about it, and the mystery of what Debbie had said. The shaman's knife occurred to me, the only thing I knew of that was missing from where it should be, but from what I knew or could guess, certainly not taken by Debbie's father.

Eventually Thomassie said, “Do you need the Cessna anymore?”

That took me out of my reverie, briefly. “Let's make the charter day by day just in case.”

In case of what, I didn't know.

Thomassie seemed instinctively to know the signs of my preoccupation. He turned in. I pretended to. I lay there wide awake, with all that had happened in the last few hours streaming through my mind. I gradually turned away from the brief encounter with Debbie and got back to the main event. Who must Davidee talk to, to guard against me making the essential links that I was sure were there if I could only find and identify them? I had a lot of information that I couldn't fit together. As long as his parents stuck to their silence about his presence on the night of the murders, he had that on his side, their word and his against what Debbie had told me so definitely about him being here on the murder night—information I had, which he didn't know about yet.

If it ever got that far, to trial, I could imagine the scene in the rec hall, which would be used as a courtroom.

His parents' testimony would say one thing and Debbie's, if she'd agree to testify, another. A defense lawyer would have been arranged for Davidee either privately, if someone put up the money, or through legal aid. I'd encountered enough defense lawyers in my time to know that Davidee's, whether legal aid or private, would be scathing about how much credence should be given to Debbie's evidence.

“Here you have,” he'd tell the jury, “a young woman with, in her eyes, a legitimate reason to get even with her brother whatever way she can. How much of what she says is truth and how much is a desire to settle that old score, which my client paid for with four years in penitentiary? How can her story be taken as believable when her parents contradict it?”

No doubt he also would use whatever that prison psychiatrist in Prince Albert had put on paper to support the case that had been legitimized in that successful appeal: that Davidee had repaid his debt to society and would be no threat in the future if his freedom were restored.

All right, I was stuck. Debbie's evidence would cast doubt, but I really needed an actual eyewitness or other evidence that would place Davidee in the murder house that night. It must be there, if I could only find it. At a little after two I abandoned the Debbie-versus-Davidee-and-their-parents scenario and tried the only other tack open to me. Who had Dennissie taken home that night who might be the murderer, or who might know who the murderer was? The small footprint in the blood that we'd guessed might be a woman's, whose could it have been? Leah's? Not Maisie's, too small. Whose then?

At that point I sat up in bed.

I said to a sleepy Bouvier on the phone at seven a.m., “Can you meet me at the detachment in a few minutes?”

“Okay if I come in my pajamas?”

I grinned. “Fast as you can, anyway.”

I had tea on by seven fifteen, when he drove up in the van. It was about a three-minute walk from Barker's house, but he always drove. Maybe that was why he totaled at least a foot more around the middle than he should have.

“You know that kid who hangs around the rec hall,” I said. “You said he was there when you and Barker checked there on the night of the murders. Andy Arqviq.”

“Yeah?”

“What was his story?”

“As I recall, he said he'd been there most of the evening. I don't think we paid that much attention to him, not as much as to the bigger guys, anyway. Figured that mess couldn't have been done by anybody his size, I guess.”

“He goes to school?”

“Don't really know. A lot of kids his age just quit and get jobs if they can, or go on the bum.”

I called Lewissie Ullayoroluk's number. His wife answered. She was up, she said, getting ready for school. I told her who was calling. She said Lewissie had gone hunting. “He did okay down around No Name Lake a few days ago and figured we could use more caribou for the freezer. From what I hear about you going down there, Davidee didn't go far enough. Lewissie was away down past the south end of the lake when he hit caribou.”

I like chatty women, especially ones who run libraries and teach school and have enough sense to marry an Inuk and live our life. I tried to imagine Lewissie living in her hometown in Nova Scotia. Didn't make it. But she seemed happy to have made her life here. Seemed to be thriving on it.

“Want him to call you when he gets back tomorrow, for the big party.”

“Not necessary. The answers I need are about Andy Arqviq. Does he go to school?”

“No. Got thrown out. He was pushing dope right in the schoolyard. Lewissie was the one who caught him. Some dumb kid on Lewissie's youth hockey team stole some money at home, long story, but it turned out that Andy had started the kid on cigarettes at fifty cents each and then moved up a notch to something more expensive that made the parents finally notice that money kept disappearing.”

“Was this known around town?”

“Sure. Barker knew about it. But what're you going to do with a fifteen-year-old in a place like this? The Inumerit took it on and Annie wanted to take him into her house, but I guess Andy didn't want to be quite that supervised. They're still talking to him but without much luck. He seems to be around all hours of the night, whenever I'm out anywhere. Is he in trouble again?”

“Might be,” I said, and we both let it go at that.

I hung up and said to Bouvier, “We need a pair of Andy's shoes.” I was thinking: Number 5 in the row of townhouses, Andy, living with that woman who gets that subsidized house and money on the side to look after waifs and strays. Number 4, the people who might have heard the murder being done but stayed with their television, scared of what they heard. Number 3, two murders and the rundown of my mother resulting in her death. Number 2, Annie and her kids and for a while, my mother. Number 1, vacant.

“Wanta bring Andy in, too?” Bouvier asked.

“Just his shoes. But I'll do it.”

I walked. Kids were out playing. I thought how hard it was to balance, get an insight into, why some kids could be chattering away and wrestling and running and yelling and throwing snowballs, having fun, rarely in big trouble, while another ran his life the opposite way. So much so that from what Lewissie had told Jonassie, just the sight of Andy around Jonassie's house had made him briefly suspicious until he considered, well, no problem, Jonassie's home. Not knowing that wasn't the case.

Answering the door at number 5, the woman was so big she blocked the doorway. I couldn't see past her. She glared at the RCMP badge on the front of my hat. When I asked for Andy, she said, “Either he's still in bed or he ain't home, anyway I haven't seen him . . .”

She called loudly up the stairs, “Andy!” Again, louder, “Andy!” No answer. “Is he in some kinda trouble again?” she asked.

“Would you go up and have a look, see if he's there?”

She pushed at her vast head of unmade hair, either gray going blond of blond going gray, glanced at the stairs, and sighed.

“How about I go?” I said.

She looked relieved. “Better you than me. His room is the one to the left of the landing.”

I climbed the stairs. The door to the lefthand bedroom was open. I looked in.

The bed either had been slept in, or had not been made since the last time. The blind was drawn. I switched on the light.

From the bottom of the stairs, a contralto roar. “He there?”

“No.”

“You shouldn' be up there then, should ya?”

I didn't answer, right away.

Apart from the bed the room was fairly neat, maybe because it was so empty. The clothes closet door was open showing on hangers one jean jacket, one cotton plaid work shirt, nothing else. On the floor was a pair of running shoes, Nikes, black with a white stripe.

I picked them up, and turned them over. The soles of both bore black stains that looked remarkably like the ones Pelly had taken back to Yellowknife, cut from the linoleum and rugs of the house two doors from this one.

I stuffed them into my parka pockets, one in each pocket.

From the bottom of the stairs I heard, “You coming down?”

“Right away.”

When I got there, she hadn't moved. “You shouldn' go in his room when he ain't there.”

“As part of what the government gives you this house and some money for, aren't you supposed to know where he is from time to time? Maybe help keep him out of trouble?”

“So report me to Annie,” she said contemptuously. “I don't need the money that bad. Goddamn cops.” So much for home influence.

At the detachment I showed the Nikes to Bouvier, who whistled and said, “Holy Jesus!”

I got through to RCMP Yellowknife on the phone. “Kitologitak,” I said. “For forensics, Pelly.”

“Jeez, Matteesie,” said Constable Emily Ford on the switchboard, “aren't we formal?”

“Didn't know it was you, Emily!” I said. “Honest!”

“Who the hell'd you think it was? Don't tell me that old bullfrog I'm relieving has a voice like me.”

We usually have a man on the switchboard.

I was going to tell Pelly right away about the Nikes, but he came with a rush. “I was just going to call you, Inspector. We're overloaded, as usual, but I've got a fair amount and some of it you might like. Main reason for the delay was those latent no-blood prints I mentioned. I had to send them to Edmonton for evaluation, they've got better equipment or smarter forensic guys, and I'm not sure which. Anyway the results were faxed to me overnight. Lemme tell you what I've got.”

I'd been waiting days for this. Now I didn't want to interrupt. I'd go with the flow. I held the Nikes in one hand, the phone in the other.

“Commonly sold boots all over the north pretty well match the bigger footprints, but as we decided when I was there, half the men in Sanirarsipaaq wear those boots at one time or another. Like, if we had a definite suspect who wore that kind of boots, some with blood on them, or signs that blood had been removed but some minuscule bits that someone trying to clean them had missed, that'd be fine. Otherwise most of the boot tracks in the blood don't give us much. Might rule out very small or very big feet, but that's all. So a lot of the tracks must have been made by the murderer, and that's about as scientific as we can get right now.”