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

by Bernadette Calonego

  Fortunately, bears are hibernating. But other wildlife—wolves, lynx, foxes, wolverines, coyotes—frisk about in the woods and on the tundra. Polar bears show up at times on the nearby coast. They follow the seals on the ice and go back north in spring. You can apparently see them every winter when they wander through villages. I suddenly realize how reckless it was to come out here alone.

  I shiver as I take off my gloves and fumble with the key Meeka gave me a few hours ago. The crime scene tape and the seals on the doors have already been removed, which amazes me. Sullivan and Delgado didn’t really take much time to investigate the crime scene. I turn the key in the lock and step into darkness. I have my flashlight on me, but I want to absorb the atmosphere of the room in the dark. That’s how the killer—man or woman—must have waited for the victim. In darkness in a windowless room. A glimmer of light, from a flashlight, say, wouldn’t be visible from outside. But the killer must have felt safer in the dark. It’s quite possible that he parked his snowmobile farther away, as I did. That way Bakie wouldn’t have discovered it.

  Until now I assumed that Bakie intended to meet somebody here. Maybe that wasn’t the case at all. Maybe he wanted to take another look at the room where the banquet was to be held, but all by himself this time; or he wanted to check out his plans on site. But that still doesn’t explain how the perp knew Bakie was coming. And why he killed him. Did Bakie surprise him when he was doing something illegal?

  Did the perp intend to steal something and panicked?

  I’ve already considered the possibility that there were two perps. A secret meeting nobody was to see. I must go through the photos again more carefully.

  I put on my latex gloves by flashlight. Force of habit. I see the chalk lines on the floor where Bakie’s body was. I throw light on corner after corner, walls, ceiling, floor; look under baskets and ropes, inspect tools and animal pelts, leather pouches and quivers.

  Suddenly I’m seized by a strange feeling.

  I’m not alone. Somebody’s watching me. I stop; all my senses are sharper. Still, I can’t hear, smell, or see anything. I shudder, but not with cold. Maybe terror from meeting the bull moose is still in my bones. I get a hold of myself. Imagine the progression of events. The murderer hides against the wall behind the door, waits until Bakie comes in. Bakie’s wearing a thin ski hat on his head; he’s pulled back the hood of his green parka. The killer doesn’t see his victim’s face. Nor his hair, nor the back of his head. He knocks his victim down from behind with a heavy tool or bludgeon. A new scenario emerges in my imagination, still fuzzy, but with potentially grave consequences. I absolutely must talk to Melissa Richards again.

  A noise.

  I whirl around, flashlight in one hand, pistol in the other.

  “Who’s there?” I shout.

  A movement in the pile of hides lying in the corner on a bunk bed. A leg appears, then another.

  “I have a gun,” I warn.

  A muffled voice. “Don’t shoot. It’s me.”

  Two arms scrabble through the hides, pushing them aside until a figure is discernible. Shannon Wilkey.

  She stands up and puts a shielding arm before her eyes.

  “The light’s blinding me,” she protests.

  I turn the flashlight away. Now she sees my weapon.

  “Please put that gun away, Constable. I won’t do anything to you.” Her voice trembles slightly.

  I open the door to let more light in.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She brushes the dust off her jacket as if that were the most important thing in the world right now. I know that nervousness lies behind this gesture.

  “I thought you were the killer coming back. So I quickly went and hid. I could hardly breathe under all those hides. I hoped I wouldn’t have to sneeze.”

  I repeat my question in a stronger tone of voice. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  She looks at me, realizing that she has escaped potentially being murdered but is standing in front of a Mountie.

  “I lost something, a flashlight, and wanted to see if it was around here somewhere.”

  The flashlight we found. Now we have its owner. But still no explanation.

  “Why didn’t you ask the police? This is a crime scene.”

  “It was sort of on impulse.”

  We go out into the sunshine in front of the building. The brightness is dazzling after the dark sod house.

  “Mrs. Wilkey . . .”

  “Please, call me Shannon.”

  She puts on sunglasses. Nice move—I can’t see her eyes anymore.

  “Shannon, why didn’t you tell us about the flashlight?”

  “I didn’t notice until today that it was missing and thought it might be here. Or I’d lost it on the way.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “By Ski-Doo. I rented one.” She points to the edge of the woods.

  What an extravagance to go looking for a small, cheap flashlight. I try to read the part of her face that’s uncovered. Something doesn’t add up. I apply the screws.

  “Shannon, I believe you’re misdirecting me. Nothing you’re telling me is logical. The Viking house is a murder scene. We’re carrying out an investigation. You are bound by law to tell us the truth.”

  My words don’t fail to have their effect; she goes silent for a while. Debating with herself about what to say or what she has to keep quiet.

  “Okay, what do you want to know?” she asks at last.

  “When were you last in the Viking house?”

  “On Wednesday morning.”

  I think I’ve misheard.

  “On the morning of the murder?”

  “Yes. Actually, we were all supposed to meet here. I mean, Kris, Dr. Perrell, Meeka, and me.”

  “And Ann Smith?”

  “Not her, she’s kept herself out of it.”

  “So all the others were here?”

  The tracks in the snow say otherwise. And nobody has mentioned anything about this plan to us before now.

  “No, only me, as it turned out. Bakie didn’t write me until after we were supposed to meet that he couldn’t come that morning. Dr. Perrell canceled when Meeka didn’t answer his email. He wanted to test the acoustics in the room. What a hoot that is!”

  “Why?”

  Shannon pouts, expressing her anger.

  “We can’t hold the banquet here. It simply won’t do. You can see for yourself that the tables and chairs aren’t even here. A week before the closing ceremonies! No microphone, no electronic equipment. The mobile kitchen isn’t ready to go. The generator isn’t doable—it’s much too loud. This place isn’t easily accessible for everybody at this time of year. As a matter of fact, Bakie hasn’t wanted any part of this for a long time.”

  She looked exasperated as hell. I can hear the frustration in her voice.

  “What didn’t he want to do anymore?”

  “This whole business with the Viking house. He’s an Inuk. He doesn’t give a damn about this place. It doesn’t have anything to do with the history of his people. Vikings and Inuit were already bashing one another’s heads in a thousand years ago.”

  I find this fact ironic, given what happened to Kris Bakie. But Shannon can’t actually know that it was a blow to the head that killed Bakie. Or can she?

  “You were here alone on Wednesday morning?”

  “Yes, and I was pissed off.”

  “Why did you keep this quiet when you were interviewed?”

  “You didn’t ask me about it. You only wanted to know where I was in the afternoon.”

  “You’re not stupid. You surely knew that it would be of interest to us.”

  She takes off her sunglasses and looks me square in the face.

  “Constable, I’m here as a foreigner. I’m scared about being dragged into a murder investigation in any way, shape, or form. Besides, I was in shock. Bakie’s death really hit me hard.”

  “How long did you wait here Wednesda
y morning?”

  “A full hour. I almost froze my feet off. I should’ve known: I should have let the others do it and kept out of the fundraising.”

  “Did you have anything to do with Bakie’s death?”

  She puts her sunglasses back on. “No, Constable, you’re on the wrong track. I was painting all afternoon.”

  “But you have no witnesses.”

  “Oh, but I do,” she says, almost triumphantly. “My cleaning lady came by late in the afternoon.”

  “You didn’t tell us that last time, either.”

  She puts her hood on over her head.

  “I really couldn’t imagine you’d seriously think I was a suspect, Constable.”

  “What does your flashlight look like?”

  Shannon hesitates before she lets the cat out of the bag.

  “It’s a SureFire Lawman.”

  I’m speechless. That’s not the small flashlight from the crime scene we sent to the lab. That’s a very expensive item. No wonder Shannon’s been looking for it. The SureFire R1 Lawman is for pros. For search-and-rescue teams. And for the police. What baffles me the most: the SureFire is like a weapon. A defensive weapon. Its beam can blind an attacker and put him out of commission for a few minutes. And something else flashes through my brain: the SureFire weighs roughly a kilogram; it’s heavy enough for a person to strike a serious blow with it.

  I immediately see Shannon through totally different eyes.

  “Why the heck were you running around with a SureFire Lawman?”

  “We’re in the wilderness out here, Constable. Not in Canada Place in Vancouver.”

  I ignore the dig. A certain fact has crystallized.

  I believe we’ve got the second murder weapon. The one that hit Bakie on the head.

  That is, we don’t have it quite yet.

  The killer took it with him.

  32

  “We have the forensics results for Bakie’s corpse and cell phone.” Bernard Closs is concealing the feeling that he doesn’t have the situation under satisfactory control and isn’t making any significant headway. Three days isn’t long in a murder investigation. Still, he wishes the noose were tightening around the killer’s neck. And not around his own. He faces disappointing four expectant people.

  His anger over Calista Gates is still bubbling inside him. He had to make it clear to her that she can’t simply disappear by herself to places without taking the station satellite phone and without informing headquarters beforehand. Or him personally. Gates defended herself by saying that she didn’t want to tell Wendy because the dispatcher would reveal her location. To his wife Georgina, for example. He secretly had to admit she was right. Wendy ought not to pass on any information, even to his wife. But Port Brendan is a small world with its own laws, and neither he nor Gates can change anything there. Besides, he doesn’t want any trouble with his wife. He’s got his hands full dealing with the media; they want to see results. To say nothing of his RCMP superiors.

  Shortly before the meeting, Gates briefed him on her encounter with Shannon Wilkey. But he hadn’t had time to consider that because he had to concentrate on the team meeting. His information will come first on the agenda; everything else will come afterward. He holds up a sketch outlining a human body.

  “The head wounds are external; they come from blows with a blunt object, which were not able to shatter the cranium. The medical examiner assumes there were three blows, the second of which probably knocked the victim unconscious. The head was not protected by the hood on the jacket; the victim was only wearing a thin, synthetic head covering, the kind worn under a helmet. The victim was already unconscious when attacked with a knife. The body does not exhibit any defensive wounds.”

  He points to a photo.

  “Here we see two stab wounds, one under the shoulder blade, one next to the spine. They are not deep and wouldn’t by themselves have been fatal. The third wound is on the upper arm, and this one opened up an artery, leading to a great loss of blood. The victim bled out before he could regain consciousness. The murder weapon is the knife we found in the Viking house.”

  Sullivan stops chewing on his energy bar to interrupt him.

  “Just three stab wounds—that doesn’t exactly look like overkill. The perp evidently didn’t even wait to be certain that Bakie was dead.”

  Bernard frowns. “We don’t know how long the killer stayed with his victim.”

  He deliberately plays the devil’s advocate, arguing in order to illuminate the problem from all sides.

  Fred clears his throat. “The killer could have turned his victim over on his back and stabbed him in the heart. But he didn’t.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t stomach seeing the victim’s face as he killed him. Delgado?”

  Frank Delgado makes a face. “Doesn’t look to me like he knew the victim, but was rather passive-aggressive. To go at him from behind like that without confronting his victim. A cowardly perp.”

  “Or he was much too afraid of the victim. Could it have been a woman killer, who could only kill this way?”

  “Women and knives. Doesn’t happen very often.” Sullivan talks with his mouth full.

  All eyes turn to Calista Gates, as if she’s an expert on female killers. She hasn’t said anything up to this point. Bernard would have liked to pump Georgina for her impression of Gates, though he knows that such things are taboo between them. Gates looks tired. But you’d never know once she gets talking.

  “I think it’s probable that Kris Bakie’s the victim of mistaken identity.”

  He’s too surprised to come up with a counterargument.

  And the others wait and see for her to set out her reasons.

  “My theory is that the killer was ambushing somebody else. He couldn’t see who drove up on the Ski-Doo because he was inside the Viking house. Totally dark, and no windows, as we all know. He simply assumed it was his victim because he’d somehow learned that the person was going to show up at that time. When Bakie entered, he was still wearing his thin head protection. His hair and head and most of his face were concealed. The murderer couldn’t really see who he was hitting. Only after the stab wounds, which didn’t go very deep because of Bakie’s thick parka and clothing, did he realize he’d got the wrong person. It’s possible that he panicked and took off.”

  “Or she,” Fred notes.

  “Or a Viking.”

  Sullivan’s wisecrack makes the men laugh; even Bernard has to grin. He looks at Calista.

  Her mien is serious.

  “I contacted Melissa Richards today and asked how long Bakie owned that green parka. I thought it looked new. Melissa confirmed that he’d just purchased it online. So the perp—male or female—couldn’t identify the person by his parka.”

  “Doesn’t sound plausible to me,” Sullivan objects. “In my opinion the murder wasn’t planned. The killer used a knife that he found in the Viking house.”

  Gates is undeterred.

  “He could well have brought a knife with him and decided at the scene not to use it so it couldn’t be traced to him.”

  “Tell us about the flashlight,” Bernard prompts her. He hopes the SureFire Lawman will bolster her theory.

  She recounts in detail what took place late that morning in the Viking house.

  Delgado exclaims: “Why is Shannon still running around free? She could have committed the murder.”

  Gates stays calm.

  “She says she has an alibi for the time of the murder, that her cleaning lady was at her place. I don’t believe she can knock out a man like Bakie with a flashlight. Even with a SureFire Lawman. But we certainly have to probe some more.”

  “Gates, with all due respect, your theory is far-fetched.”

  Sullivan must be frustrated that his own research hasn’t been successful, Bernard thinks, and he can empathize with him.

  “Why would the perp take the Surefire Lawman with him when he fled?” Sullivan asks. “If he’d left it at the scene, the thing w
ould throw suspicion on the person who owns it. That’s Shannon Wilkey. He left the knife there; why not the flashlight as well?”

  “Maybe he thought he could use it.”

  Gates stops, as if something just occurred to her.

  “We should turn to the public to look for it.”

  “How so? Advertise on Facebook?” Sullivan rolls his eyes. “The murderer will definitely hide the thing.”

  Fred pipes up. “Bakie probably went to the Viking house because he mistakenly supposed that Shannon Wilkey was there. Remember Gates told him that Shannon wasn’t home when he came to her villa? He’d called off the morning meeting with the committee and could have wanted to explain himself to her. Probably the two of them were looking for a way to hold the banquet in a more practical location.”

  It doesn’t escape Bernard that Gates casts a thankful eye on her teammate. So they’re working together. She obviously feels Fred has backed her up and throws her next words on the table like a challenge.

  “If it really was a case of mistaken identity, as I suspect, then the killer is still going to go after his actual victim.”

  Sullivan and Delgado shake their heads in unison. Fred says nothing. I have to make sure Gates doesn’t wrap him around her little finger, Bernard thinks.

  He quickly reassumes control of the meeting.

  “We’ll let that theory hold for now and examine concrete facts. For example, the cell phone. The provider is Telus. Here’s the analysis. We can see who Bakie was in contact with in the days before his death.”

  He distributes the list of phone numbers and text messages.

  “Bakie was ready to make a break for it. He’d accepted a job offer from the Hyatt Regency hotel in Las Vegas. But he didn’t tell anybody. You see the flight confirmation with WestJet. Las Vegas, one way only. The emails with the hotel.”