CRIES FROM THE COLD: A bone-chilling mystery thriller. (Detective Calista Gates 1)

by Bernadette Calonego

  I clear the table and put the laptop back down. Then I type in Shannon’s name in the search window. More than five thousand results turn up. Shannon at exhibitions. Shannon in front of one of her paintings. Shannon at an auction. Shannon as a socialite. Some photos show her with her husband. He looks considerably older than she does and is apparently prominent in the US. Newspaper articles describe him as an important, ultraconservative Republican Party donor. He was on the board of the New Gun Federation for a time.

  I study picture after picture until my eyes are tired. Then one of them catches my eye. A photo during the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler. It shows Shannon at a reception at the US embassy for the American athletes. She’s standing with the ambassador and three athletes next to a bear made of ice. I enlarge the photo on the screen. Shannon is wearing a cap with the Winter Olympics 2010 logo on it. A cap exactly like the one I found on the ice.

  23

  Before my brain injury, I had a phenomenal memory. Now it’s merely normal. I’ve made it a habit to write down anything important immediately. Again and again, I mix up the letters as I write; that never used to happen. I also can’t identify some smells anymore. Oddly enough, my sense of taste was preserved. I’m no longer dead-on when choosing an outfit, as one of my sisters observed. I know, it’s an insignificant detail compared to other impairments, to my temporary loss of speech, say. It’s irritating nevertheless because I used to be proud of my perfect flair for fashion. My doctor in Vancouver kept track of all these changes (she avoided the word damage). She admitted frankly that she was a bit confused, because she couldn’t discover any pattern, any system to my impairments. But that’s often the case with brain injuries, she said, a field that has scarcely been researched.

  My doctor is not only confused, she’s also fascinated. For instance, because I suddenly possess new abilities. I plan in the evening to wake up at six thirty. In the morning I wake up at six thirty. Yesterday I “programmed” myself for six o’clock, and I was awake at six on the dot. The cat we had when we were children had the same inner clock.

  I also have brainstorms that suddenly hit me. Most of them are very brief. Two days ago the words coconut milk clearly appeared before my inner eye. When I inquired about it at the Port Brendan supermarket, the manager informed me that she had recently stocked coconut milk for the first time in the history of the store. Dr. Perrell had asked her for it. Anyway, I can now make Thai noodle soup. Thank you, Dr. Perrell.

  Today I’d love to have a vision about who Bakie’s murderer is, but my brain won’t play ball. It’s 6:30 a.m. Time for the Qigong exercises my doctor prescribed. After that, I log on to the intranet, where we gather our office information. Yesterday I told the others about Gerald Hynes and the board with the insignia. His two Ski-Doos. I told them about Shannon Wilkey and the Olympic hat. It is all there. But nobody responded. Are they all still asleep? Seven o’clock. My radio turns on automatically. Kris Bakie is the number-one topic on the regional news, naturally. I hear Closs’s voice saying the police are working around the clock to clear up the circumstances of his death. He doesn’t utter the word murder. Beside Bakie, the public apparently has a burning interest for something else. The Winter Games, that is. They’re normally held in Happy Valley-Goose Bay every three years. This year’s will be a scaled-down version in Port Brendan because an anonymous, and apparently magnanimous, sponsor insisted on it. There are rumors that Shannon is that sponsor, but she neither confirmed nor denied it.

  The mayor of Port Brendan states on the radio that the games will absolutely not be cancelled. He added that Labradorians have never given up in the face of adversity—he probably means Bakie’s and Lorna Taylor’s murders—and will not be intimidated now.

  I butter my bread—homemade because I can’t stand store-bought bread. Even the jam is homemade, not by me but by our dispatcher, Wendy. She wants to introduce me to Labrador’s berry culture and predicts that, come summer, I’ll go berry picking in the tundra like everybody else. Tundra. Me berry picking. If possible with a broad-brimmed hat and mosquito netting. I’ll walk on water first.

  Birds rejoice. My cell phone.

  Closs. He gets straight to the point.

  “We’ve got the medical examiner’s report.”

  Adrenaline courses through my veins. I didn’t count on getting the report so fast. Portents and miracles still happen.

  “Not Bakie’s. The dog’s. He was poisoned. Rat poison.”

  “Why’d they do the dog first?” I exclaim.

  “Maybe it was faster—or the ME is a dog lover. What do I know?”

  “The ME surely didn’t send the report at seven in the morning.”

  “That’s not the point right now.”

  Oh no, that is the very point. The ME sent the report yesterday evening for certain, when Closs was still in the office. But I wasn’t informed until many hours later. Now Closs knows that I know.

  But that doesn’t stop him.

  “Tissue and muscles were cut by a sharp knife, the spine with a bone saw.”

  I’m startled.

  “Why all that effort? It would have been faster with an ax or a chainsaw.”

  “Maybe the perp happened to have these tools with him. Maybe he’s a hunter.”

  Almost the entire male population of Port Brendan and part of the female population hunts.

  “What about the ax?”

  “The perp probably put it in the blue bag afterward.”

  “So you think Hynes is behind it? But why would he have put his own ax in there?”

  “Well, it can be any old ax.”

  “No, he let us know that it is his ax. He recognized it by the green paint spatter. Was van Heisen able to talk with Hynes’s foreman?”

  “Not yet. He’s searching for the dog’s remains.”

  “Anything come of it?”

  “No, or it would be in the intranet.”

  Really? A lot of things are missing from the intranet. So much for a well-coordinated team. If this doesn’t change, I’ll bring it up. And probably make myself unpopular. I’m also aware that Closs hasn’t called me because of the dog. He needs me to interrogate Melissa Richards because she gave him the brush-off, and a search warrant takes more of an effort.

  He finally asks: “So you’re going to get Bakie’s laptop today?”

  “I’ll do everything I can to get it.”

  “It’s urgently needed.”

  As if I didn’t know.

  “What do you think of the picture with Shannon and that cap, Sergeant?”

  “They probably sold thousands of them during the Olympics. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But follow up that lead anyway.”

  I hear a snow blower in front of the house and rush to the window. Rick Stout. Now I can use the SUV.

  “I’ll be at Melissa’s at ten,” I shout at my cell, not realizing until later that Closs has already ended the call.

  I make a second cup of coffee. So, rat poison. I need to find out if it’s sold in Port Brendan’s hardware store and who might have bought any. I do a quick search on the internet to see which brands are sold in Labrador. I stumble across a newspaper article where a journalist from Labrador complains that store-bought rat poison doesn’t work because rats and mice have to eat it for days until it finishes them off. More efficient are the rat bait blocks sold in Alberta, he writes, which is why there are no more rats there. To get these blocks in Labrador, you’ve got to put up with a background check and pay $250 for a permit.

  The poor dog definitely didn’t have to spend days nibbling on the poison. I send Closs a text: “What kind of rat poison?” because there’s nothing about it on the intranet. Then I text Fred, telling him about my research and asking about Hynes’s foreman.

  “Working on it, more later,” he replies.

  But I don’t hear anything from anybody for a long time. Only when I’ve finished breakfast does a text message from Closs arrive: “Gates, we’re patrolling Port Bren
dan to be more conspicuous. Can you take over until ten?”

  That’s not a question, of course, but an order. I understand why Closs wants to keep the population calm, mainly because of the Winter Games, but in my mind solving the crime quickly would achieve more than driving around in the village.

  At least I can take my heated SUV. I quickly scan the weather report. No snowstorm is predicted for today, which is unusual for March because there are normally several storms this time of year; they occur so regularly that the locals have given them names. “The Lioness” usually arrives at the beginning of March, I see on the weather page, and right now everybody’s waiting for “Sheila’s Brush” and hoping that this blizzard won’t hit until after the games.

  My mood picks up when the motor of my Ford Edge kicks in reliably, in spite of the cold. Good neighbor Rick has really done a fine job in front of the house. The small pleasures of a Labrador winter. I patrol between walls of snow and the houses of Port Brendan, drive past six churches with more parking spaces in front of them than the supermarket and the clinic have. Three cars are parked in front of Mary Brown’s, the chicken restaurant. Pickup trucks in the village are almost all gray, silver, white, black, or dark blue. The palette of the local Ford and Chevrolet dealer.

  The street becomes one-way going down to the harbor, a narrow breach in a white fort. I have to back up because a pickup is coming at me. I take the road to the red-and-white lighthouse, park in front of it, leave the motor running, and have some coffee from my Thermos. Nothing catches my eye on the ice-covered ocean, not even a seal. I’d hoped to see some harp seal pups, but the mothers brought them into the world far out on the ice, where they’re safe from seal hunters because fishing boats can’t get out to them.

  My thoughts roam over the icy wilderness that’s strewn with glassy cubes. I’ve got so many questions. Why did somebody deposit a conspicuous, blue garbage bag containing a dog’s head, an ax, a marked piece of wood, a red sweatshirt, and a cap from the Vancouver Olympics out on the ice and weigh it down with a fisherman’s chain? If it was a warning, then to whom? To Kris Bakie? But the perp didn’t wait long enough for him to get it. The chef was dead a day later. A warning to Ann Smith or Shannon Wilkey, because the bag was placed within sight of their homes? Could one of them be in danger?

  The board with the stamp on it and the red sweatshirt point to Lorna; the dog’s head indicates a trail to Bakie. But why the cap and the ax? And the chain?

  Shannon was in Vancouver and Whistler the year the Olympics took place, and she wore the same cap. Ann Smith reported the blue bag and turned pale when I revealed its contents to her. But perhaps I’m barking up the completely wrong tree.

  A car parks beside me. Fred van Heisen.

  He opens the door of my Ford and slides onto the passenger seat.

  “Didn’t think I’d find you down here,” is his greeting. His beaver-fur hat with earflaps makes him look like a trapper. Fred actually fits in, in Port Brendan; with his weather-beaten face, he could easily pass for a Labradorean. A good-looking Labradorean. All he’s missing is their sense of humor.

  I pick up my Thermos.

  “Closs sent me on patrol until ten. What are you doing here?”

  “I was just trying to turn my car around in this labyrinth when I saw you. Saves me texting.”

  “Coffee?”

  He declines with thanks, and I screw the cap back on.

  I have to worm everything out of him.

  “What’s new?”

  “I caught up with Hynes’s foreman. Randy. He can’t give him an alibi for two hours around noon. But Bakie was alive at that time, of course. I could tell that he was holding something back.”

  Fred does that, too—holds things back—until I ask him, “So?”

  C’mon, Fred, cut the suspense!

  “Melissa Richards came to Perrell’s house that afternoon, where the foreman and Hynes were hard at work.”

  “When was that?”

  “She got there shortly before four and stayed for half an hour.”

  “What did they talk about?”

  “The foreman doesn’t know because they went off to another room.”

  “Wow!” I have to process that for a moment. “Melissa said nothing about that; neither did Hynes. Why would he keep that quiet? He’s not stupid, after all; he knows we’ll find out about it.”

  Fred toys with his gloves.

  “He’s protecting somebody.”

  “Surely not himself. Now we’re going to pick him apart.”

  “Protecting not him, somebody else.”

  “Certainly not Melissa.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she left him for Bakie.”

  “People have complicated feelings.”

  I look sideways at Fred. Is he talking about himself?

  He keeps looking at the ice. No sun today, just a slate-gray, overcast sky. My feelings are definitely complicated. Martin left me when I needed him most. Nevertheless, I’m attached to our years of marriage; they were good. At least as I recall them. I still don’t understand how he could give all that up. And why, now that I’m a lot better, he doesn’t want to come back. He’s simply replaced me with someone else. And I don’t even know who that is. Don’t even want to.

  I suddenly realize that my eyes are filling up with tears. Shit, that’s the last thing I need.

  “You don’t think by any chance that Melissa has something to do with Bakie’s death?” I ask hurriedly.

  Fred turns to me, hesitates. Does he notice my moist eyes? They almost always weep in the raw wind here; he certainly won’t pick up on it.

  He waits a couple of seconds before answering.

  “You can find that out when you’re at her place today. I’m going to take a peek at Hynes’s two snowmobiles.”

  “The board with the insignia,” I say, “is the connection to Lorna’s crate. Not too many people could have known that we found a board like that on the crate.”

  “You might be mistaken there. Scott Dyson has certainly told everybody what he found. That got him a lot of attention, which he is sure to have enjoyed.”

  “We’ll have to have another go at him. And Grace Butt, Lorna’s friend.”

  “She lives in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.”

  “She’s coming to Port Brendan today for the funeral.”

  “That’s where Delgado and Sullivan are going.”

  I look at Fred and—dramatically exaggerating—arch my eyebrows.

  “My dear colleague, Grace is one of mine. The sarge assigned the ladies to me, or did he not?”

  “Please, call me Fred,” is his retort.

  24

  I don’t park directly opposite Melissa Richards’s house. Not everybody has to know that’s where I’m going. Besides, a blue SUV is already there, a shiny, new one. I hope it’s not Melissa’s mother’s. I’ve heard she guards her daughter like a mother hen. I want to talk to Melissa alone. As I approach the house, a man comes out the door. Dr. Perrell. He seems less surprised by our meeting than I am.

  “Constable, good morning,” he says as he greets me.

  He’s wearing a thick, colorful scarf around his neck and a Russian fur hat. He looks very different from the way he looks in a white smock.

  I return his hello.

  “Are you here as a doctor?”

  Hopefully Melissa’s able to be questioned.

  “As a human being,” he says. “As a human being.” He stops. “What a terrible business. Kris was a wonderful man. He put an enormous amount of energy into planning for the banquet.”

  I breathe out white air as I speak, just like him.

  “What will you do now?”

  “The fundraising event will go on; there’s too much at stake, and those involved want to carry on. But we’ll have to rethink some things.”

  He must have spoken with Melissa about it. His eyes are fixed on the RCMP badge on my jacket.

  “How’s the investigation going?”r />
  “You’ll have to ask Sergeant Closs. You’ve heard about the dead dog and the ax on the ice?”

  “Yes, yes . . . that I have. Do you think it has anything to do with Bakie’s murder?”

  “We’re following up on every theory. What do you think?”

  “Me? Why me?”

  He looks as if my question were an imposition on him.

  “I just thought—perhaps you as a doctor hear things that don’t make it to the police.”

  “That’s your department, not mine. I have plenty to do with my profession. There is such a thing as a doctor-patient privilege, as you surely know.”

  He turns to leave.

  “Excuse me, work calls.”

  I play my last card.

  “Did a patient come to you recently with what looked like poisoning? Bakie’s dog was apparently poisoned. Rat poison.”

  He walks on as he calls back over his shoulder, “You’ll probably find rat poison in every house in this place.”

  Then he gets into the blue SUV and drives off.

  I concentrate on my imminent conversation with Bakie’s fiancée. Her house is a little white bungalow, identifiable by a red door. All the windows are covered with fake white mullions, as is the fashion in Port Brendan. Perhaps that artificial lattice is meant to affect Victorian coziness. To me they look like crosshairs. I knock and go right into the hallway.

  I shout, but nobody appears. My watch says it’s five after ten. I hear water running somewhere. Sounds like a shower. I call Melissa’s name several times. The rush of water stops. At last a door opens, and Melissa appears in a fluffy bath robe. Her copper-red hair is wrapped in a towel.

  “Grab a seat in the living room,” she says, “I’ll be dressed in a minute.”