I woke you up when I heard a girl scream—I wanted to throw the words in Mom and Dad’s face—at night, outside, and you two did nothing.
Stop! You’re hurting me!
I was twelve when I heard Becca’s scream, and her body was found three weeks afterward. Beaten, raped, tortured. I read the detailed reports later when I was with the RCMP. It was then that my anger at my parents’ indifference really came to a head. Their failure. They simply didn’t believe me that the scream I heard meant something really awful. I was an earwitness to the crime. I know the screams of a child being raped. I don’t have to imagine it. I heard it with my own ears. I’ll never forget it. Never.
But let’s move on.
In the hotel café in Montreal, I contemplate Lorna Taylor’s case, as Céline Dion sings a ballad in the background. The pain in my limbs is only gradually going away; I’ve discovered that flying feels like hot tongs. I know what’s in the Lorna file. I’ve practically devoured it in the last few days. I work systematically. Or I used to before the assault. That was the case even when I was a child. I could solve hard puzzles fast. Pictures of monochrome desert landscapes or of similar-looking wine corks in a thousand jigsaw pieces.
Lorna disappeared in December three years ago. She had a job in a furniture store in Happy Valley-Goose Bay; she didn’t sell furniture but worked in the newly opened interior decorating department in the same store. Good to know that there was something like that in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. It was comforting for me to read that about eight thousand people live there. But Labrador in its entirety averages only one person per eleven square kilometers. The inhabitants call it the Big Land. It surely didn’t take much imagination to come up with that name.
Back to Lorna. When her work was over at five, she wanted to meet her boyfriend, Guy Stravitz, the American Air Force pilot, at a restaurant. She never arrived. It was a beautiful day in Labrador, which means no storms, no snowfall, moderate winds, and very cold. Stravitz told the police later that he didn’t pick her up at her workplace because it wasn’t very far to the restaurant and Lorna wanted to avoid her boss’s prying eyes. When she didn’t show up, Stravitz texted her several times. The two had known each other for four months, and a friend of Lorna’s said they were very much in love.
I study Lorna’s file picture. A young lady laughing, with smooth black hair, probably shaped with a hair straightener. A pretty, pert face, eyeliner, and a lot of black mascara, a small tattoo on her neck.
I rummage around for a photo of Stravitz. In his pilot’s uniform, he looks like an all-American boy: a military haircut, an innocent face, an optimistic gaze. Twenty-eight—five years older than Lorna. He waited in the restaurant for an hour before asking the owner to help him find Lorna’s parents’ phone number. Which shows he didn’t know anybody in her circle of friends he could contact. Her parents in Port Brendan reacted to his phone call with caution: they had never met him. Lorna’s closest friend, Grace Butt, knew the young couple’s plans for the evening, but she, too, hadn’t heard anything from Lorna. Nobody knew where she was. Her parents informed the police at midnight.
My parents would have done that sooner if they’d been in the Taylors’ shoes, but they’re Greek. Mom and Dad get worried fast, but only if their own children are involved, and they assume the worst right away. Lorna’s parents certainly knew the dangers lurking about there. You can freeze to death so easily. And there are wild animals—bears, moose, lynx, coyotes, wolves, for all I know. Labrador is pretty much a closed book for me. And with about a thousand blank pages.
My eyes meet those of a man sitting at another table. He’s young, probably early thirties. I’ve forgotten how it feels to be checked out by a man. For eighteen months I’ve avoided being looked at in public. Even when I appeared to be “normal” again. Fake it to make it, my older sister coached me. Act as if. I can’t tell her how strenuous it is to act as if everything is perfectly all right.
Guy Stravitz has an airtight alibi. He was already in the restaurant when Lorna left the store. The RCMP in Happy Valley-Goose Bay were able to question him twice before he was recalled to the States. The case hit the headlines in Canada, and even the American media found out about it. At the time I was still the ambitious, fearless researcher in Vancouver’s Major Crime Homicide Unit. And happily married. So I thought.
I avoid the stare of the young man at the bar table and concentrate on the report in front of me. Somebody killed Lorna. I order a tomato juice with Worcestershire sauce when the waitress passes by.
“Pardon my boldness, but may I ask you a question?”
I look up, surprised. The man from the bar table is standing in front of me.
“Yes?”
“Are you perhaps the new person joining the RCMP in Port Brendan?”
I’m hearing for the first time the accent everybody spoke of. The unfamiliar cadence sounds friendly, calming. Hard to imagine that people who talk like that can be evil. Nonetheless I’m annoyed. My ex-boss assured me that my posting to Port Brendan would be officially announced only after my arrival.
“How do you know that?”
He smiles an excuse.
“I was standing behind you in line when they changed your flight. My in-laws own the house the RCMP is renting for you.”
Now, I could be angry and dismiss him, or I could riddle him with questions. I decide to riddle.
“Do sit down,” I say. “Detective Sergeant Calista Gates.” That rank is still mine.
“Ernie Butt. I work in the Transportation and Construction Office in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, but I grew up in Port Brendan. Was just at a conference in Montreal. You’re from Vancouver?”
Ernie Butt. The first man from Labrador I get to know. He has a dark moustache, and his two front teeth are long and narrow. Doesn’t look like an office type, but that’s probably because of his clothes: a heavy lumberjack shirt and ski pants.
“So you already know that, too.” I smile, not wanting to seem huffy.
He nods.
“As I said, I was behind you at the Air Canada counter. I must warn you. Labrador is a vast region, but it’s a small world. We don’t have many secrets. People always want to know what’s going on.”
I drink some tomato juice in response. Céline Dion keeps singing in the background. I don’t have to encourage Ernie Butt to go on talking; he does it all by himself.
“Did they send you here because of the bones?”
“Because of the bones?”
“The bones that were discovered—Lorna’s bones. Lorna Taylor. They told you about that for sure.”
I furrow my brow automatically.
“The identity of the bones is not yet officially confirmed.”
“I know. Everybody thinks it’s Lorna.”
“Why?”
“She disappeared three years ago.” He leans forward. “I really hope this case is cleared up. It’s not good for the tourist industry.”
“What do you mean?”
“We want to attract more tourists. Single women, too. Women tourists have to feel safe in Labrador.”
“The cause of death hasn’t been determined.”
He gives me a look of concern. “It must have been murder.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The bones were in a wooden crate. My cousin found them on Savage Beach. He was looking for driftwood.”
“He was looking for driftwood in winter?”
“Sure. It’s washed up in the fall. Free wood for the stove. My cousin knows where to look. He does it summer and winter.”
“And he found a crate there? In the snow?”
“There’s not much snow on the beach. My cousin saw it from far away. A pack of coyotes were sniffing around it. He wanted the wood and chased them away. That’s when he discovered the bones and the skull.”
Where are the bones now? I would really like to ask, but I don’t want to give myself away that much.
Ernie gets up.
“
I’ve got to get to the airport; I rebooked via St. John’s so I can go visit my sister.” He looks down at me almost like a father. “Lots of luck in Port Brendan. We’ll certainly meet there during the Winter Games. By the way, my wife was friends with Lorna. You must definitely talk to her.”
I remember: the friend who knew about Lorna’s restaurant plans. Grace Butt. Ernie raises a hand in farewell and leaves.
I stare at the pile of papers in front of me. I wish I’d pumped Ernie some more, but he’s gone. I open my iPad and hit pay dirt. Wooden Crate with Skeleton Found on Labrador Beach. The article confirms everything Ernie told me. The cousin. The search for driftwood. A coyote pack. Coyotes in Port Brendan—well, that’s wonderful. The crate. And the information that there’s a reconstruction of a Viking house near Savage Beach. Did I read that right? Vikings in Labrador? Something else for me to research. A sentence at the very end: Police do not want to say at this time whether the crate was washed up in the fall or whether somebody recently placed it on Savage Beach.
3
Seventeen hours later, I’m standing in Inspector Peter Allen’s office in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. I might as well be on the moon because I’ve seen practically nothing of the town. My plane landed just before a thick pea soup of a fog covered the place. A bush plane was supposed to take me to Port Brendan, but that’s out of the question for today, Inspector Allen informs me. They’ve reserved a room for me at Hotel North. I feel dead tired. Haven’t slept much in the past few nights. I’ll simply have to suck it up. Getting over things was no problem before. The victims, the violence, the crimes, jealous colleagues, long hours at work—all of it no big deal. And now I’m crumping because I’ve missed a few hours of sleep.
My one consolation: Inspector Allen seems to be as tired as I am. It’s Saturday, and he’s working instead of being with his family. A solid man, barrel-chested, beefy face. And huge bags under his eyes.
“We had three suicides this week. All youngsters under sixteen. It’s an epidemic.”
I’ve heard about the wave of suicides among young Inuit and Innu Indians.
“In Port Brendan?”
“No, in communities up north.”
My eyes wander to the map beside Allen’s desk. There is an Inuit settlement on the north coast of Labrador, and an Innu reserve half an hour from Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Port Brendan is farther away. Four hours on a half-paved road through the wilderness.
I’m too tired to be patient.
“What can you tell me about the crate with the skeleton?”
Inspector Allen rubs his face as if that will put thoughts of the dead kids from these communties out of his mind.
“Somebody put the body in the crate and weighed it down with stones. Then he tied it up with a rope and sank it somewhere in the ocean.”
“It’s Lorna Taylor?”
“Pretty sure. We’ll have the dental report today. Lorna had a small gap up front and a Maryland bridge in her upper-right jaw. We know that from her parents.”
The parents, who finally find out that the dead woman is their daughter. And that she was discovered not so far from their house.
“You’re assuming it’s murder?”
“That seems the most probable hypothesis.”
A crate in the ocean. Something crosses my mind that I read some time ago. A dead humpback whale washed up in Newfoundland. People wanted to put the skeleton on display. To rid the bones of fat and flesh, they put them in a wooden crate, loaded it up with stones, and left it in the water for a while. In no time at all, fish lice had eaten all the tissue; only the bones were left.
“Do you think the perp left the body in the water so fish lice would strip it and the bones would be completely clean?”
For the first time, Inspector Allen looks at me as if he doesn’t have a clueless city slicker before him.
“We’ve thought of that possibility.”
“So the perp wanted to preserve the skeleton right from the start?”
“Looks like it. And he wanted it to be discovered.”
“How was he able to sink the crate in the water? Isn’t the ocean frozen in December?”
“Not three years ago. The water didn’t freeze until the end of December. Happens sometimes. That year was an exception. The road was quite passable for many days during the first half of the month because heavy snow didn’t come until January. Which means that many people went back and forth to Happy Valley-Goose Bay, to buy Christmas presents, for example.”
“How many people have been questioned in the last several days?”
“We’ve spoken to many people here in Happy Valley-Goose Bay—to Lorna’s coworkers, her superiors, friends, people who knew her. Your new colleagues have been active, too, in Port Brendan. You’ll find out when you get there. Unfortunately not much has come from it all as yet that can help us move ahead.”
“How’s it possible that nobody ever saw the perp doing whatever he or she was doing? His or her actions must have been conspicuous.”
The inspector raises his eyebrows.
“You’ll find out for yourself that there are many secluded bays along our coast. And people have cabins everywhere, out there in the bush. No problem doing things unnoticed.”
“Do you think the perp planned on having the crate wash up on a beach somewhere?”
“It didn’t wash up. Someone deliberately placed it on the beach so it would be found. It didn’t break loose. The rope had recently been cut with a knife.”
“Do you know how long the crate was in the water?”
“Probably three to four months. Because the cartilage hadn’t disintegrated yet.”
Several months. Until Lorna was only a skeleton.
“Then the perp hid the crate somewhere. Where could that have been?” I’m talking to myself more than to the inspector.
“Best you discuss it with your colleagues in Port Brendan. But as I said, isolated, hidden hunting shacks are all over the area.”
“Can a person transport a crate like that in a boat by himself? Or on a sled? The crate was weighed down with stones, after all. Or maybe there were two perps?”
Peter Allen rubs his forehead. I hope he doesn’t lose patience.
“Oh yes, you can do it by yourself. You can pull it over the ground with ropes. And then tip it into a boat. It’s relatively easy to do. It doesn’t take many stones to sink a female body to the bottom of the sea. And pulling it out of the water is no big deal, either. The crate is lighter in the water, of course.”
“Lighter? I find that hard to imagine. With those stones? And the wood must have absorbed all that water.”
“Nevertheless it’s not as heavy in the water as you might think. You mustn’t forget that after three months there was only a skeleton in there. Besides, the water would give the crate a boost when it was pulled up to the surface. The way water gives a seal a boost when it hops onto an ice floe.”
I look at him and process the information. I could think more clearly if I weren’t so tired.
“So there’s a high probability the perp is from Port Brendan? And he wants us to pay some attention to Lorna’s murder . . . But why now?”
“I think he’d already put the crate on the beach in the fall before the snow came. It just took some time before somebody found it.”
“Ernie Butt’s cousin found it. I happened to meet Mr. Butt in Montreal when our flights were rebooked.”
“The man who found it is not Ernie Butt’s cousin, not even related to him. What else did he tell you?”
“He’s afraid that the unsolved case might hurt tourism in the region.”
The inspector smiles for the first time.
“Ernie’s always concerned about Labrador’s good reputation. Even though there are tens of thousands of tourists in London every year, and there are hundreds of murders there.”
He pours himself a coffee from a pot on a coffee machine.
“You really don’t want one?” he asks.
&nbs
p; I refuse. I want to be able to sleep through the night.
He takes a sip and says, “Jack the Ripper didn’t hurt London’s reputation, I’d say.”
Ernie Butt seems to get under the inspector’s skin.
What puzzles me is that Lorna’s murderer wants to cause a sensation, if the inspector’s theory is correct.
“Where’s the skeleton now?”
“With the medical examiner. You can take it with you. It’s being flown back to Port Brendan. The family wants to bury Lorna as quickly as possible.”
“Has the medical examiner finished his investigation?”
“Yes, Bernard Closs will get the report. I’ll give you all the documents tomorrow.”
Sergeant Bernard Closs. My new superior in Port Brendan. He gets the report first, not me. I’ve got to get used to it. More reason to ask questions while I’m here.
“Were there signs of violence on the skeleton?”
“The stones in the crate left traces on the bones, naturally. Everything else is in the report.”
He doesn’t want to tell me anything more before my new boss has seen the report. Can’t he send it to Closs electronically? Or is this only an excuse not to reveal anything more to me? No point now in asking if I could speak to the medical examiner.
The inspector clears his throat.
“The case is now in the Port Brendan RCMP’s hands. We’ll help where we can, but we have a huge area we must take care of.”
Then he says something astonishing.
“In any case we can clear the American pilot of any suspicion. He never lived in Port Brendan. He also never went there. His alibi is solid.”
I can hear the obvious relief in Allen’s voice. At least the jobs are clearly distributed. Port Brendan is in charge of the investigation. That’s good.
Still, I’m surprised. Why is the Happy Valley-Goose Bay RCMP so ready to pass on the case to their colleagues in Port Brendan? Especially at this time, when there’s a good chance of solving the murder? That would be a success for Peter Allen, who must be familiar with every detail in the case. He certainly wouldn’t want to let that opportunity slip away. Strange.
CRIES FROM THE COLD: A bone-chilling mystery thriller. (Detective Calista Gates 1) Page 2
