THE TRICKSTER Read online

  He should, of course, have kept the whole thing to himself, but he needed to explain to McEwan why he sympathized with the Indians. He had tried to impress upon the engineer that their beliefs were as deeply held as his, that they believed the Trickster was as real as the engineer believed Christ is our savior.

  Muir was sitting still, waiting for an answer.

  “I know you care, Mr. Muir. I am sorry if I seemed to suggest otherwise. My only fear is that by mentioning this fanciful notion it will further inflame the men’s imaginations.”

  Muir nodded. “My thoughts initially, Reverend, but let me enlighten you as to how far this has progressed.”

  Henderson was not sure he wished to hear.

  “They are saying they will not enter the hole in the rock to set new charges without you being present.”

  “This is not completely eccentric. I believe the gang which built the two-hundred-mile stretch of rail east of here would not set any charge unless first blessed by a priest.”

  “I am not done. They also want the Kinchuinick shaman.”

  Henderson took a deep breath and sighed. Muir was right to be concerned. He had watched horrified on many occasions as the men had laughed and made ribald jokes at the expense of the solemn and ever-present Kinchuinicks. The Kinchuinick shaman had been treated with as much respect and belief as a hopeless jester by those men. Obviously these were changed days. Henderson stood.

  “I see. I will think carefully about the sermon, Mr. Muir. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

  Muir stood to go, putting his hat on as he pushed back the stool. “Thank you.”

  He made to leave. Henderson spoke. “Mr. Muir. May I ask you something?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Do you share the men’s fears?”

  Muir reddened slightly. “As I said, Reverend, there is no place in the Christian man’s heart for such beliefs. Good day.”

  He opened the door, stepped into the snow and was gone. So Muir was as frightened as his men. James Henderson sat down again and began to prepare a sermon.

  16

  It would be out of his hands in a few hours. The worst thing, as always, was that the media would go apeshit. Craig stared at Brenner’s slim report as if it told him he had a week to live. Instead, it told him loud and clear that Joe hadn’t died in a car accident, told him that Joe had been ripped apart and then tipped over the gorge as an afterthought.

  There had been some grim excitement when the truck driver had been found, the one who kicked his own bucket on the highway. But when they hauled in the body there had been absolutely no sign of blood, a weapon or even a struggle. Zilch. The guy was clean as a whistle. In short, that poor bastard was certainly the last guy over the pass and probably the only witness they were going to get; but Craig was sure that he hadn’t murdered Joe Reader.

  He put his hands to his face and mashed the skin around his eyes. They would send someone from Edmonton now. The rules said you couldn’t lead an investigation if you were personally involved, and boy, was he involved. The guy who’d killed Joe would know how involved if he ever found himself in a room with Craig.

  He let his gaze wander from the document of doom on the desk to the window, where the falling snow was thicker than the fake stuff they used to chuck around on a John Denver Christmas special.

  How to deal with the media, that was the next big one. Craig could just imagine how the ratings-hungry jerks were going to cover this. What made better copy than a murder in a tourist town, where the biggest stink is usually some skis getting stolen, or some guy winning a busted face in a bar brawl? Suddenly, there’s a jackpot; two patrollers dying in a freak avalanche explosives accident, then a murder that would make Stephen King say yuk. All against a backdrop of folks having winter-wonderland fun in the snow. Christ, it would have the American networks circling Silver like crows around a carcass.

  Bad thought. It made him see Joe again. Or what had been left of Joe. Craig sighed and replayed the tape in his head one more time. Joe’s pickup was the second to last vehicle to cross the pass that night. The truck came after. He was sure of that. Seen the tracks himself. The murderer couldn’t possibly have survived up there without a vehicle, so either he was in Joe’s car, or Legat’s.

  Or both. Craig’s mouth opened slightly. Or both. In Joe’s truck as far as the gorge, then hitched a ride in the Peterbilt. He got excited. Then he stopped getting excited. Joe’s truck had been pushed over the edge. Something really powerful had pushed it. A single killer and some old truck driver with a dodgy heart couldn’t possibly have done it by themselves. It would have taken either ten men or another vehicle, at least another pickup. The snow that had fallen relentlessly for at least ten hours after the event made sure they would never know the answer to that one. A murderer couldn’t have chosen better conditions to cover his tracks. And anyway, why would someone like the Legat guy have taken part in such a foul deed? His records showed he was just a regular trucker: no record, nothing untoward, and strangely, for someone who just took the coward’s way out, nothing to suggest he would want to. For the hundredth time he asked himself what the hell were they dealing with here.

  The local TV and radio stations had covered the ski patrol deaths, and Wolf River Valley Cable had run some crap about the dangers of avalanching. But this was the real thing. A bloody, messy, unexplained, motiveless cop killing, bound to go network, and he shrank at the prospect. If their man was a psycho, headline news wouldn’t help. Where was the piece of shit now? That’s what he needed to know. The son of a bitch could be walking around town collecting for the blind as far as Craig knew, since right now Silver had more strangers than residents. That was, if he was still here. What if he was going the other way, to Stoke? He dismissed it. Instinct told Craig McGee the murderer was headed toward Silver.

  He pushed the button on his phone. “Holly, I’m going out for an hour or two. Tell Sergeant Morris to hold the fort.”

  It crackled back. “He’s out here already. There’s some messages. Do you need them now?”

  “Well, that’s for you to say. You know what they are.”

  “I guess they can wait.”

  He released the button and grabbed his storm jacket from the peg.

  Craig searched for Morris. He saw him sitting on the edge of a desk talking into a phone like he was a Hollywood theatrical agent, holding the phone beneath his chin and gesticulating with both hands to whoever was unfortunate enough to be on the other end. Not today, thought Craig. Today he couldn’t find the energy to play boss with this herd. Constable Daniel Hawk was at his desk studying the photos of Joe’s truck. Craig flicked him on the shoulder as he passed.

  “Going up to the pass to look around the site again. You want to get me up there in your Ford, Constable?”

  Daniel got up without speaking, put on his hat and followed his superior officer out into the car park.

  The snow was getting silly now. Plows were doing their best, with the skiing traffic crawling behind them like ducklings after their mother, but it looked as if the snow would win by dark. Silver was going to be blocked off again. At least by road. A long discordant hoot from the distance sounded like the freight train on its way down the mountain was laughing at the cars. The tracks were clear now after the explosion, and those mile-long iron snakes of coal kept rolling through like nothing had happened. Daniel drove slowly and silently, accepting his place humbly in the line of cars.

  Craig glanced across at him. “So how many colors have we managed to get on the board?”

  Daniel smiled. “We’re working on ten. But there’s still a debate about whether the truck driver should be pink or green.”

  “I wasn’t being funny, Hawk. I was expressing displeasure.”

  “I know, sir.”

  Craig looked out the window, paused awhile. “How are the guys coping with it? The fact it was Joe, I mean.”

  Daniel made a little shrug, his eyes fixed on the white mess ahead. “They
cope. You know. Angry, I guess, but they figure we’ll get him.”

  “And you?”

  “The same.”

  Daniel was putting up a defense shield. Craig could feel it, but he carried on.

  “Joe wasn’t seeing anyone else or anything, was he?”

  “Not to my knowledge. You knew him as well as me.”

  “Sure. But you bowled with him. He would have said if anything was wrong.”

  Daniel took his eyes off the road for the first time, and shot his staff sergeant a look. The traffic slowed behind the plow in sympathy.

  “Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind, sir?”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That Joe was half-blood Cree and I’m full Kinchuinick, so we must have been best of buddies. That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it? The only Indians, even half-Indians, in the detachment, and we’re bound to stick together.”

  Craig lowered his eyes. “Come on, Hawk. That’s not what I meant.”

  “I think it’s exactly what you meant. Sir.”

  Daniel Hawk was right, of course, but Craig wasn’t going to let his clumsy mishandling of the constable stand in the way of what he wanted to know. “OK.” He gave in softly, paused again, thinking. “I just wondered if there was anything cultural, anything particular to Native Canadians I wouldn’t know. Something that might have escaped me.”

  Daniel Hawk continued to look straight ahead. Craig, over his embarrassment now, was starting to get annoyed. “Aw, Christ, Hawk. I’m fucking sorry if it’s not politically correct to notice the fact that you and Joe happened to share some Indian blood.”

  “We didn’t. I repeat. He was half-Cree. I’m full Kinchuinick.”

  “Whatever. Quit acting like I just swindled Manhattan off you for a dollar and answer the question. Was there anything going on with Joe I should know about?”

  Constable Hawk threw him that look again, then decided he’d turned the knife enough. He looked at last like he was thinking instead of brooding. “Nah. Nothing. He was pretty stable with Estelle and all. I didn’t notice anything weird.”

  Hawk’s boss nodded solemnly. It was just as Craig thought. He’d have known if there had been anything wrong with his sergeant. It was just that niggling little maggot of insecurity that white cops have when dealing with Indians that made Craig even bring the topic up. He was sorry he had to. He never thought of Joe as anything but Joe. And whether Daniel Hawk believed it or not, he thought of him only as a damned good constable. Anything was worth checking. They had precious little else to go on.

  Daniel drove on in silence but he was still thinking. Craig could practically hear the wheels turning in there.

  “What? There’s something. Isn’t there?”

  Hawk shook his head. “Nah. It’s nothing about Joe. It’s the cultural bit that made me think of something.”

  “Tell me.” Craig was hungry for it. Whatever it was.

  Daniel looked grim, fighting to analyze whatever it was he’d conjured up.

  “OK, like I say, it’s probably nothing. In fact, given the time involved, it’s absolutely, definitely nothing. But the way Joe died. It made me think of something else. That’s all.”

  Craig turned his body toward Daniel. “Go on.”

  “I saw something like it, while I was policing on Redhorn. But it happened around twenty years ago.”

  Craig tried to work it out. Daniel Hawk was only thirty-five years old, tops. How could he have presided over a murder at the tender age of fifteen? They were recruiting young into the Mounties, but not that young.

  “I don’t understand, Hawk. What do you mean you saw it?”

  “I said the murder happened over twenty years ago. That’s what the forensics guys came up with. We only found the mutilated remains of the body six years ago. It got dug up by some white construction guys who were pile driving for the new rodeo center. ‘Course, if it’d been found by Indians it would never have been reported. That’s the Kinchuinick way. Keeps the reserve a tight community. Makes police work almost impossible. The person, whoever it was, hadn’t even been reported missing.”

  Craig tried to work this out. “So you uncovered an old body killed over two decades ago that was similar in its disfigurement to Joe’s injuries?”

  “Not similar. Identical.”

  “Indian?”

  “They couldn’t say for sure. No dental records or nothing.” He looked across at Craig. “Contrary to popular white Canadian myth, we’re kinda the same as you under the skin.”

  Craig ran a hand over his mouth, ignoring the dig. “Why didn’t you mention this?”

  “I only thought of it recently.”

  Craig exhaled. “Fuck. Where are the Native Police files kept, Hawk? At Redhorn?”

  “Yeah. The tribal administrator keeps them, but since the Mounties from Stoke were called in they got them too.”

  “Remember the year?”

  “Sure. Larry was born that year. 1989.”

  Craig drummed the dash impatiently, his desire to have that file on his knee right now eating at him like a hunger. The traffic was as terrible as the snow. The tailback behind the plow stretched for at least a quarter of a mile, every vehicle apart from theirs revealing by their ski racks that they contained humans in search of fun and thrills in this white stuff. Daniel looked across at him and read his discomfort.

  “You still want me to head for the site?”

  “No. Drive on to Stoke.”

  Daniel nodded as if reprimanded and fixed his eyes on the road. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing those photos again, but it served him right for bringing back the whole sorry affair. Maybe the Kinchuinick way was best. Maybe he should have kept his trap shut. But then, he wasn’t really a Kinchuinick anymore. He was a policeman.

  Constable Benson, stamping his feet in the snow, raised a heavily gloved hand to the Ford as they cruised past the taped-off site. Daniel waved back. It was wilderness up here. The Trans-Canada and the rail track sneaked over this high pass like intruders, as if they knew man had little right to be here and should think twice about leaving his mark.

  Craig had driven up and down here about two dozen times since the murder. If he was waiting for that movie cop’s moment of divine inspiration, he was going to have to wait a long time.

  This was new territory. There had been only one murder in his time in Silver. A pathetic, sad murder: a summer tourist battered to death in a rage by a drunk redneck from the mines up north, allegedly for insulting his girlfriend. Ugly and savage. Sylvia’s death had been neither. It had been what they described as peaceful. Craig disagreed. The insidious creeping death in which the body was attacked from within was to him a thousand times more violent. He did not associate the hollow white cheeks of his once rosy-skinned wife with any form of peace.

  When the doctor had told him, in that stupid pink-carpeted room in the hospital full of plants and shit as if that made what got said in there any better, that Sylvia’s cancer was in the womb and that it would be a matter of days, he’d experienced a kind of elation. It was anger, and unimaginable grief, but it fired him up. He held her cool thin hand as she let out one small breath and never took another. That was her death. Banal and pointless. He didn’t even call the nurse, just sat and looked at her, knowing it was over, that she’d gone.

  If anyone was ordinary it was him. At least he had been. Now, he could hardly remember the thick-skinned, unthinking cop he’d been for nearly two decades, letting the extraordinary events of life and death that were unavoidable in his job float past him as though he were immune. Not the kind of immunity that made him feel immortal. More as if he didn’t really notice he was alive. Taking things for granted. That time in Scotland, they’d walked on the beach in the Outer Hebrides and Sylvia had lain down on the cold wet sand, sifting through some shells. She’d picked ten tiny, delicate half-moon pink shells and laid them out in front of her.

  “Look. Babies’ fingernails.”

  H
e’d crouched down behind her, his arms round her neck, which was swathed in woollen scarves against the ridiculous weather, and looked at those beautiful fragile things.

  She reorganized them earnestly, as though the order mattered. “Our baby will have tiny nails like that and you can bite them for him. Stop him scratching his face.”

  Yes, he’d thought. That’s right. We will. No doubt about anything. The McGees were married, they would have children and they would grow old and proud of those children. That’s how life went.

  Craig was not superstitious then nor was he now, but the memory of the gust of wind that ripped across the sands on that huge, freezing, empty beach came back to him often, the wet wind that had whipped away those paper-thin shells and made Sylvia laugh as she tried in vain to gather them up again. He thought about that a lot now. His life, no longer on those invisible oiled rails that carry a person through without having to ponder direction, was now as fragile as those shells. The wind would come, he knew, and swipe him away too. And what kind of wind would it be? Joe’s had been a hurricane. A huge, angry hurricane. That’s the way Joe went, and he was jealous. Joe, Joe, Joe. Must keep thinking about Joe.