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

by Bernadette Calonego

  “No ambulance, don’t call an ambulance,” I manage to get out.

  The shaking begins.

  As if a crocodile has me in its jaws. Then I black out.

  When I come to, I’m lying on the sofa and Hynes is holding my hand.

  I slowly recognize my surroundings again.

  “Can you understand me?” he asks.

  I nod. Breathe deeply in and out until I can sit up. Now he lets go of my hand. I feel ashamed. How could this happen? How could I ever forget my pill?

  “How long was I out?”

  “Just for a little while. What’s the matter?”

  Just for a little while. So not a proper attack. For the moment, I’m relieved.

  “I’ve got low blood pressure. Too little sugar in my blood. If I go without eating for a long time, everything goes black.” The words come easily to my lips.

  “I’ll get a sandwich.”

  Gerald rushes into the kitchen and comes back with a clear sandwich bag.

  “Eat this. And drink your coffee. Should I warm it up in the microwave?”

  “Yes, please. Thanks a lot.”

  He watches me open the bag with trembling fingers. Typical white bread with ham, tomatoes, and mustard. I’ve got no choice but to eat it under his watchful eye.

  Now I’ve really made a mess of things. I’ve become his supplicant.

  “Please don’t tell anybody anything. I don’t want to be the talk of the town.”

  He makes a dismissive gesture.

  “Don’t give it a thought. I’ll be silent as the grave.”

  He is that already, I think to myself. He says nothing about Melissa and Shannon.

  When he comes back with the hot coffee, he has a request to make.

  “Shannon Wilkey is an important client of mine. Building her house was a huge contract. It was a big boost for my business. Maybe she’ll build something else. I’d like her to come my way again.”

  That makes sense to me. But is he concerned about his business or Shannon’s affections? Maybe Melissa’s speculating a little too wildly. She also suspects that Ann Smith is here because of a man. She views every traveling lady as a threat.

  At that moment, the lights go out.

  Hynes swears.

  “Shit. Another power failure!”

  It’s better I leave. I wash down the mushy sandwich with my coffee and attempt to act in a professional manner.

  “We are not aiming to destroy your business, Gerald; we have a murder case to solve. Two murder cases. You can help us with everything you know.”

  I’ve scarcely uttered the words when an image appears before my inner eye. Oh, my God! One of my visions. My brain is really going berserk today.

  I see a dog’s head. And a hand with a scalpel.

  26

  He logs in to Kris Bakie’s email account and searches through it. Bakie was obviously not big on email, which is no surprise to Bernard Closs. Young people prefer to text on their phones. And Bakie’s cell phone is still in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, a thought that frustrates him to no end. So for the time being all he has is the laptop. He could have handed this job to Calista Gates as a thank-you for securing the device and the passwords. His survival instinct, however, says no. He wants to keep the reins of the investigation firmly in hand. He’d read the disappointment in Gates’s eyes, though she didn’t say anything. That’s why he told her that Lorna Taylor’s funeral begins at three. She wouldn’t miss it for the world, and he won’t stop her from going, even though he’s officially sent Sullivan and Delgado to it.

  He’d been immersed in Bakie’s laptop content when the power went out. Happens here all the time. They have a generator at the station, but he can’t concentrate with the roar it makes. So he takes time to organize his notes. Gates suggested scrutinizing Dr. Perrell more thoroughly. But she doesn’t want to take it on herself because he’s her doctor. He can’t put Fred van Heisen on Perrell because he’s being treated by him as well. He didn’t ask Fred what his health problems are. The two other men are on their way to interview members of the Bakie family. He has to wait until they’re back and hopes that they aren’t Perrell’s patients also. Otherwise he’ll have to go himself, though he’d like to avoid that since his wife works in the hospital.

  The power is back. Wendy brings him a hot tea. She didn’t have to, but she’s always looking for an excuse to have a little chat. Maybe Gates is right: their dispatcher probably overhears too much about the investigation.

  “I’ve heard that NTV wants to film the funeral, but Reverend Herschell is against it,” she comments.

  Bernard can’t hold it against the pastor. He’s just as unhappy with it himself, feeling pressure from the media and the public. There’s no talk as yet of sending an outside investigative team to Port Brendan. At least for the present. He knows deep down that he can thank Gates for that. She’s the outside team. He must keep her in check and simultaneously let her do her thing. Difficult and nerve-racking.

  “As long as the cameras are outside the cemetery, they have a right to be there,” he grumbles.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go, too,” Wendy says. Naturally—everybody who’s got legs and a cap wants to be at the funeral of the year.

  “Go ahead, I’ll hold down the fort,” he replies, leaning over the laptop again.

  Gates told him about an old friend of Bakie’s who once worked in his restaurant and had a falling out with him. He remembers that character. A junkie who’s registered with the police. He was in the slammer more than once for breaking the law. He apparently leads a drug-free life now and will take part in the snowshoe race at the Winter Games.

  The Winter Games. Why is it they must take place now of all times and in Port Brendan of all places? When his team is already up to its eyeballs in work. He’s heard through the grapevine that Bakie’s murder hasn’t made the locals concerned about their safety. The whites apparently believe that a rivalry among the Inuit is to blame. The Inuit, for their part, assume that a jealous white man did away with him. He wonders what people think of Lorna Taylor’s murder, then. Not even her death will stop the Winter Games. For the inhabitants of Port Brendan, the games are a marvelous occasion. Even his kids are in them. Georgina drives them to practice. She complains that he, as their father, isn’t involved enough. But it’s just that right now the murder investigation is taking up all his time and energy. He realizes he’ll never get any sympathy from his wife—he knows that from experience. He doesn’t meet her expectations, either. He thinks she’s unfair. Fact is, they both work full-time. Georgina sometimes takes the night shift, and he works nights and weekends often. It’s no easy task to coordinate their working hours. She accuses him of not being home enough, but in his opinion the same could be said of her. Georgina might well have hoped that bringing Calista Gates on board would mean a lighter burden on his shoulders. Bakie’s murder has probably destroyed her hopes.

  He discovers that Bakie’s emails mostly revolve around business deals concerning his restaurant, the Eider Duck. Orders, complaints, communications with other chefs. Particularly with old coworkers from his Vancouver days. Bernard works through the inbox, then he turns to the files. The yield from the photos is disappointing as well: a few snowmobile outings, family get-togethers, and a lot of pictures of artfully arranged meals.

  Bernard goes back to the emails. Bakie—or whoever had access to his laptop—might not have been aware that deleted emails don’t completely disappear, even when the trash folder is emptied. He presses the restore key, and a good dozen of them do indeed appear.

  At that moment Fred van Heisen shows up in the doorway.

  “Do you need me for anything, Sarge? Otherwise, I’m going to finish up the accident report.”

  He nods absent-mindedly, because now things are getting interesting. Bakie quarreled over money with Dennis Richards, Melissa’s brother. He reads email after email, and the story begins to take shape. He calls Fred over in his excitement.
r />   “Get Dennis Richards in here. He threatened Bakie over some money. And take a look at this.”

  He turns the laptop in Fred’s direction. Dennis Richards’s Facebook page. Pictures of slain coyotes hanging from a wooden gibbet. Melissa’s brother posing with a large knife.

  “There. On the ground.” He points to a spot. “Isn’t that a bone saw?”

  “Do you want to have Richards brought in right away?” Fred asks.

  He can understand that van Heisen doesn’t have any desire to bundle up in his heavy clothing again and head out, not after he’s been standing in the cold for an hour at the scene of the accident beside a dead moose. But that’s Labrador for you.

  “I want to take him by surprise,” he answers.

  Fred gets the address and leaves the office without comment.

  Bernard is optimistic. At last a most promising lead. He ponders his strategy.

  Twenty minutes later, van Heisen is back with Dennis Richards. The latter has a very sinister look on his face. He’s wearing blue jeans, biker boots, and a black quilted jacket with some sort of insignia on it.

  “Thank you for coming,” Bernard begins politely. “We just want to clear up a few things of interest to us.”

  “Like what?”

  Dennis leans forward on his chair, arms akimbo, as if ready to get up again.

  “What did you give Bakie money for?”

  “That’s nobody’s business.”

  “We wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”

  Dennis wiggles his biker boots back and forth before he manages to respond. “I invested in his restaurant. The Eider Duck. And I’m probably not the only one.”

  “How much?”

  “Trade secret, Sergeant.”

  Snotty little shit, Bernard thinks to himself but doesn’t show it.

  “We know how much. But we’d like to hear it from you.”

  Dennis spots the laptop and puts two and two together.

  “I told Melissa she shouldn’t let that go. That Mountie woman conned her. It’s not legal.”

  “Your sister gave us the laptop voluntarily.”

  “We want it back.”

  “We found emails between you and Kris Bakie on it. You threatened him unless he gave you your money back.”

  “Threatened? What a bunch of crap! I’ve never threatened Kris.”

  Bernard reads him this passage: “Either you pay or you comply. You won’t get away with this so easily, pal.”

  He folds his arms over his chest.

  “What did you mean? Bakie won’t get away with this, Mister Richards?”

  Richards stands up and sits down again.

  “Are you trying to pin something on me? You’d better watch it there, Sergeant.”

  Bernard puts his hands on the table.

  “Is that a threat, too? Are you threatening the police?”

  “I was just trying to get Bakie to marry Melissa. Is that a crime? I told him if he didn’t, then I wanted my money back.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifty thousand.”

  Bernard exchanges glances with Fred, who’s standing behind Richards against the wall.

  “That’s a nice pile of money. Where did you get so much?”

  “I work, Sergeant. Does that surprise you? Unlike many people here who live off welfare. I’ve worked in Alberta. Three-week shifts, sixteen hours a day. Driving trucks, at minus thirty. That’s how you make real dough.”

  “How long have you been back from Alberta?”

  “Six days. I was supposed to fly back tomorrow, but after this business with Bakie—my family wants me to stay.”

  “Did Bakie repay you?”

  “He got engaged to Melissa.”

  “Bakie wrote you that you’d have to wait a long time to get your money back because he’d have to shut down the restaurant, and that would break Melissa’s heart.”

  “She’s got nothing to do with the restaurant, man. She’d run it better than he can—you can bet on it. But he doesn’t let her.”

  Richards speaks as if Bakie were still alive.

  “Did you try to force Kris to turn over the running of the restaurant to Melissa?”

  “Fuck, no. That’s . . . Do you want anything else from me, or can I go?”

  Bernard wonders what will happen to the restaurant now, without the gifted chef. If the business is sold, Dennis might not even get his investment back. And so he probably hasn’t got a motive to be a potential killer. With Bakie’s death, he loses. But Bernard knows the routine well enough to keep all options open for now. People often act irrationally. He continues his interrogation.

  “Where were you between two and six on Wednesday?”

  “I helped put up the podium for the Winter Games—there are plenty of witnesses. And I was home by five, with my mother.”

  “We’ll be checking your alibi.”

  Dennis’s legs twitch.

  “You should look into who’s got a key to the Viking house. There are some people around here you should question—not an innocent man like me.”

  Dennis has struck a nerve. As a matter of fact, keys for both entrances were made and distributed. But nobody seems to have a list of who got them; even the tourist bureau doesn’t, something he can’t understand. Besides, who sees to it that everybody locks the doors all the time?

  “We’re grateful for any information that might possibly be connected to the crime,” he counters, managing to stay businesslike. “Did Bakie have any enemies?”

  “Sure he had enemies. Just ask the fishermen he doesn’t buy from. He has his suppliers, most of them poachers, because they’re cheaper.”

  Dennis gets angrier and angrier. He’s probably so mad because his sister Melissa won’t get married now, even though he’s invested fifty thousand.

  Bernard is surprised that Dennis doesn’t badmouth Gerald Hynes, though Hynes evidently believes that the Richards family still harbors feelings of revenge toward him.

  He shows Dennis the Facebook image with the knife and the bone saw.

  “Did you kill Bakie’s dog?”

  Dennis takes a quick look at the photo and laughs.

  “You can’t fool me, Sergeant. Bakie’s dog was poisoned, but I didn’t do it. And I didn’t cut him up, either.”

  “Do you own the knife and the saw?”

  “Sure, they’re mine. Every hunter has things like that at home.”

  “Not necessarily. Many hunters use a chainsaw when they cut up a dead animal.”

  “Those are butchers, Sergeant. I don’t want to ruin the pelt when I can sell it.”

  Bernard turns to Fred.

  “We’ll take a look at his knife. And the saw, too.”

  He hopes his voice doesn’t betray the nervousness he feels. He found a message in the emails that’s got him puzzled.

  Kris, don’t push it too far. Or else it could mean a sudden end for you.

  The sender is Ann Smith.

  27

  The parking lot for the Anglican church is packed. As are the lots for the supermarket, the hardware store, the Salvation Army church—there’s not a single spot in Port Brendan that isn’t occupied by a parked vehicle. It’s a miracle you can even drive down the street and that nobody’s left their car in the median.

  I’ve had the wise foresight to take my Ski-Doo and park next to the gas station. It’s three hundred meters to the church from there, but I don’t care. It’s only half past two, but there is already a huge crowd at the cemetery. I’ve pulled my cap down over my face; I’ve got sunglasses on to hide my eyes and a scarf over my mouth. I want to be incognito, not cause a stir. And Delgado and Sullivan don’t need to know that I’m hanging about at the funeral. After all, Closs didn’t detail me for this mission.

  I can hardly believe it, but six different denominations have established churches here: the Apostolic Church, the Salvation Army, the Pentecostals, the Anglican Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Roman Catholic Church. Quite a lo
t for two thousand villagers. People here have more churches than kinds of coffee at the supermarket. The other cemeteries in Port Brendan lie outside the village. One of the old church graveyards is even on a little island off the coast, accessible only by boat. Or by snowmobile in winter. Did people in earlier times want to keep their dead as far away as possible? That won’t happen to Lorna Taylor; she’ll be put to rest in the middle of the village, next to the cemetery entrance, where a grave has been dug. I can’t tell by the shape of the hole whether a pickax or a jackhammer was used.

  I push my way through at the rear of the crowd, not as inconspicuously as I thought. I’m one of the few wearing sunglasses. People turn and look and give me the once-over. But they do that to everybody who arrives. A funeral, especially one like this, is an unusual event, after all.

  The ground rises slightly, and I place myself at the highest point to survey the situation. I can see the camera team from here, positioned on the side of the street that leads up to the church.

  The first person I recognize is the woman who spoke to me at Tim Hortons this morning. A few rows back, Wendy’s standing with two teenagers, probably her kids. Ernie Butt is nearby; he’s looking in my direction but doesn’t see me. I’ll meet his wife, Grace, after the funeral; she doesn’t want to talk at the police station but at my house. She’s not standing beside her husband, who’s with three other men I don’t know. Georgina Closs catches my eye; she’s wearing a pink cap with a pompom on its pointed end and a pink jacket. An interesting color selection for a funeral. She evidently likes loud colors. Her car is bright yellow.

  A pathway is cleared for the family and the pallbearers. Lorna’s parents are accompanied by relatives; a young man is supporting her mother, who looks devastated. I pick out Grace Butt from the crowd. She’s walking arm in arm with another woman, maybe a sister or a friend. The minister begins the service. I avert my eyes to resume my inspection of those present. Gerald Hynes apparently didn’t come, nor has my neighbor, Rick Stout, as far as I can tell. I spot some young Inuit women in the crowd, but I don’t know if Meeka Stout is among them. Ann Smith and Shannon Wilkey are also absent.