THE TRICKSTER

by Muriel Gray

  “All the way up?”

  “The whole way.”

  He looked into his older brother’s eyes and took comfort from something he saw there. Was it love? Trust?

  Alexander stepped up onto the hay bale and spat on his hands. The rusting metal hulk hung impassively on its chains, the single chain that had broken free of its beam hanging enticingly down about four feet from the highest bale. It was a rusty old thing, sure enough. It hung there the way dead moles hung on fences, as a warning to newer plows that their fate was sealed unless they performed. Stored high up in the rafters along with other junk to make room for things that had yet to fail in their duties. All Sandy had to do was to jump up and catch the chain, climb it and crawl along the plow to descend on the upper level of the barn from which it was attached. James had done it. He did it while Sandy watched. That beautiful, joyful creature had clapped his hands in delight and appreciation when his older brother had leaped to safety on the upper floor of the barn, leaving the plow swinging madly in his wake. And now, as reward for that loyalty and affection, he was going to make Sandy do it against his will.

  He didn’t tell the small boy that the contraption had groaned and creaked under his weight, or that the height was terrifying once you pulled yourself up onto the back of the redundant red metal monster. He didn’t say any of that. He wanted Sandy to find it out for himself. He wanted him to suffer. And he did. He watched as Alexander weighed up the height of the chain and jumped five or six times until he finally caught hold of the metal link. He listened as his young brother whimpered with effort and fear as he pulled himself up onto the back of the plow, conquering his fear purely for the admiration and attention of his older brother. And then that adored older brother watched as those chains broke, tipping Alexander onto the floor below before following him with half a ton of plow, which sliced away half of his head as it fell. If he had only fallen a few feet away. Just a few feet and that rusty blade would have missed him. But he fell as if landing on a target, and James had watched as the metal clipped off the side of his brother’s head as neatly as the grocer pulled wire through cheese.

  He watched it all. And it was all his doing. And now Sandy was here to implore him to fetch their mother again. A mother who had died seven years ago, silently blaming James for the death of her son as James himself did to this day. Henderson would surely go mad if this apparition stayed to torment him.

  “It hurts.”

  The figure lifted its hand again and turned its head, so that James could see the quivering gray of the brain that was somehow continuing to function as its body died beneath it. It was Alexander. And he must go to him, try to keep him warm and safe.

  Henderson stood up and walked toward his tiny imp of fun. He knelt before the boy and breathed his name. “Sandy?”

  He looked back at him for a moment and then a smile played across those pink lips. Sandy’s eyes seemed less imploring. They glittered in the light of the lamp. But it was Alexander’s voice that spoke.

  “You murdered me.”

  Henderson stopped breathing, his terror pressing on his chest like a vise. This had to stop. Please sweet Jesus let it end.

  “Would you like to see what it’s like to be murdered, you cunt?”

  The voice was becoming less like Alexander’s, and the figure before him was starting to change. Henderson wanted to cover his eyes and ears but his body could not move. He was paralyzed and rooted to the floor, his bony knees only just supporting him on the wooden boards. He knelt feet away from the thing and watched as it rotted and peeled before him, stinking and writhing with worms. Pieces of flesh fell on the floor with wet, sickly thuds and the worms that had burst through those beloved eyes dropped down to work on them.

  Henderson found his voice and began to scream. He screamed from a place in his chest that made the delicate vessels of his throat rupture. When they burst into his cabin the screaming had stopped. James Henderson lay unconscious in an empty corner of the room, his chin wet with saliva delicately laced with his coughed-up blood, his thin limbs tangled together like tossed bones.

  26

  It had taken twelve years to mature the Dalwhinnie malt whisky. Somewhere in Scotland, the man who had watched it being bottled would have clucked his tongue in disgust if he’d seen Katie put the glass to her lips and swallow its contents without thinking.

  She let the alcohol burn its way down the back of her throat and put the glass down beside the bottle on the kitchen table. She didn’t really want a drink. It was all she could think to do when the RCs left her with the black cloud of doubt and fear they’d brought into the house. And she needed a space, a beat, before she spoke to the man she loved, sitting still and quiet there by the fire. The snow had started to fall gently again. She watched dumbly as the big flakes caught the light from the kitchen window on their way to the ground. Bart would be out there catching the flakes in his coat as usual. Everything as normal. Except that everything was not normal.

  Sam Hunting Wolf. Katie Hunting Wolf. Billy and Jess Hunting Wolf. So it was no big deal, a name change. But he hadn’t told her. She wondered now if she had spent these past ten years in a dream, an adolescent cloud of happiness, where nothing mattered except this family and their love. It was a kind of selfishness, that shutting out of the past. It excluded everything except the life she and Sam had made together. The children they had made together. It said that nothing else that had gone before mattered. Now, perhaps she was wrong.

  Now it looked as if the past was going to pay her back for her indifference. The name wasn’t important. No. It was a good name. Hunt or Hunting Wolf, it was Sam’s name and she’d made vows to take it. It was the horror and the mystery of what was happening to Sam. She felt a creeping fear that he had other secrets. Secrets that would matter more than his abandoned Indian heritage.

  The swing door to the kitchen pushed open and Sam stood holding it there with his foot. He looked at the back of his wife’s head and longed to touch the golden hair. She didn’t turn around when she spoke.

  “I just needed to think, Sam.”

  He swallowed a dry lump in his throat. “Have you had time enough?”

  She turned and looked up into his face. That darling face, now contorted with fear and hurt and bewilderment, and she stood up and stepped into his arms.

  He stroked her hair and held her face to his chest. “I can tell you if you want.”

  “It’s not important.”

  “It was long before we met. I was sixteen.”

  “I don’t need to know.”

  He put a hand beneath her chin and pulled her face up to him. “Katie. I’m scared.”

  In ten years her husband had never said those words. Sam. The man who was strong enough for them all. The father who loved his wife and children as if they were the last on earth. He was scared. That made Katie more scared than she could stomach. She broke away from him and braced herself. “Sam?”

  He sensed what was coming. His eyes implored her not to say it.

  “Did you kill that boy?”

  The words sounded ridiculous. She could scarcely believe she’d spoken them. His reply was even more unreal.

  “I don’t know, Katie.”

  “… and although there is no official word as yet from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police we can exclusively reveal that this sleepy ski resort has yet again been shaken to the core by a grisly murder… Aw shit, Brian, don’t get in my eye-line. I hate it when you get in my eye-line.”

  The snow-covered CNN reporter gestured to the sky with a gloved hand and turned his back on the cameraman to compose himself for another take, while a boy with a clipboard raised his arms in a protest of innocence.

  Craig watched, though he couldn’t hear, through a gap in the blinds he’d made with a finger, until the guy started the same spiel again. He turned back into the room where Staff Sergeant Becker was still talking.

  “So the twenty-three hundred hours shift will now take over that duty and the
cops on duty now will have to work right through.”

  There was a groan from the roomful of tired policemen.

  “We don’t have a traffic violation here, folks. You don’t need me to remind you your buddy was one of the victims. It’s going to take as long as it takes.” He looked over at McGee. “Staff Sergeant McGee. Can you address the detachment on the suspect, please?”

  Craig looked at this guy. So Edmonton thought this fifty-year-old desk man would do a better job of catching a killer than he would. Simply because he knew Joe Reader too well. Assholes.

  “We don’t have a suspect, Staff Sergeant.”

  Becker caught his tone and remained polite. A teacher to a pupil. “OK. You interviewed the Kinchuinick. What do we have?”

  Craig saw Daniel Hawk flinch at Sam being called simply “the Kinchuinick,” and for once thought that it was not an oversensitive reaction.

  “We have a mystery. Damned if I know what’s going on.”

  Becker looked at the men who were waiting for instructions and guidance and was irritated by the unprofessional resignation in McGee’s tone. He hated these clean-up operations, working with people you’d only just met, usually bristling with resentment at your presence.

  But it was his job and he didn’t like being hindered.

  “Well, perhaps if you can brief the team on what you learned, maybe someone can start to clear it up for you.”

  Someone laughed at that. It could have been one of Becker’s men, or one of his own. It didn’t matter. McGee sighed. He was behaving badly. Maybe he was too closely involved. He moved forward and sat on the desk in front of Becker, one foot on the floor and his hands clasped at his knee.

  “Constable Hawk and I interviewed Samuel Hunt of nine Oriole Drive at nineteen-forty. We ascertained that he had been not only in the vicinity of the murder at the time but was in fact in a state of unconscious collapse in the trees during the kill. No one saw him at this time, but we have witnesses who saw him emerge from the trees approximately half an hour after the boy’s estimated time of death.”

  There was a murmur from the assembled room.

  “Furthermore, Hunt claims to have been alone in the ticket office at Stoke during the murder of Joe, without witnesses or proof he remained there.”

  Becker spoke behind him. “And we don’t have a suspect?”

  McGee continued to look straight ahead. “Nope. We surely don’t. There was no sign of blood or injury to Hunt when he left the trees. There were no footprints around the boy’s body, or indeed any traces on the corpse to intimate Hunt’s involvement. Plus, whoever killed Joe had to get up there to the pass in a blizzard that had all but closed the road to do the deed, which involved just as much gore as the boy’s death, and would have had to push the truck with Joe in it over the cliff and get down off the pass. Now, the truck could have been pushed over with another vehicle, but that would have left marks, and the truck that Hunt was driving that night has already been checked by Benson and shows no signs of even a scratch.”

  Becker was silent at his back.

  “We think there is a remote possibility the killer may have hitched a ride with a truck driver who we subsequently found dead of natural causes in a parking lot on the Trans-Canada. It can’t have been Hunt, since he was spotted driving back from Stoke behind the plows at ten the next morning.” Craig left a pause, then turned his head to address Becker, sitting back in the leather armchair Craig used in the briefing room. “Messy. Huh?”

  Becker nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  McGee continued, knowing this was going to cause a stir. “There’s the other problem of motive, of which there appears to be none. The murders are of course gruesome, but unconnected. In the case of Joe there was a deliberate manipulation of the remains.”

  He paused. He remembered when Joe used to sit here on these plastic chairs taking notes and grinning at the guys who liked to make smart-ass comments during briefing. His throat tightened at what Joe would have made of being the subject instead of the investigator.

  Craig swallowed and went on. “But in the boy’s case it appears to have been a less calculated, frenzied attack. The head of course was sliced open down one side first, we know, but it seems as though the killer then went on to destroy the entire body, even though the victim was clearly dead.”

  Constable Laing coughed at the back. It sounded like it was covering a retch.

  “The only similarity in Joe’s case was a murder that happened on the Redhorn reservation twenty years ago. The corpse was found in a state of near-mummification and the manipulation of the remains was identical to that of Joe’s. Sam Hunt grew up on the Redhorn reservation, and would have been there at the estimated time of that death.”

  That caused a big buzz, and it sounded like an angry buzz. Becker took over.

  “Is that it so far, Staff Sergeant?”

  “So far. Yes.”

  “OK. Well, before I formally take over now, I just want to thank you and your team for taking it to this point and handling what must be a very alarming and alien situation to such a small detachment with such professionalism and calm.”

  McGee glared at him. “You’re welcome.”

  Becker stood. “Can I have Bob and Dennis in my office and would the rest of you get your duties from Sergeant Leonard? Let’s get moving.”

  Craig remained on the desk as the room cleared before him, Becker putting an unwelcome hand on his shoulder as he passed.

  Good luck, smart-ass, thought Craig as he watched Becker close the door of the conference room. He put his hands to his face and kneaded its tired flesh like dough.

  Hawk was still in his seat when he finished his rough facial.

  “You’re part of the B-team, Hawk. I guess you can go home. They’ll wonder where you are.”

  Daniel Hawk stood up and stretched. “No, they won’t. Tess has taken Larry to her sister’s place in Calgary for a few days. She doesn’t like being alone in that house up there when I work late on a case.”

  Craig nodded. Hawk’s house was a spectacular log construction high in the woods above Silver. He’d built it himself, and Hawk always boasted that in the summer the scent of pine and cedar knocked you out as you drank a beer on his porch. Craig had only been there once and he was impressed by its solid and solitary countenance. But he could understand Tess wanting out if her husband wasn’t coming home every night on the dot. There was one lonely trail up to the house and that was it. In a winter like this, that made socializing pretty unlikely, and the snow must surround the place like a wall.

  “Looks like I’m surplus to requirements now, Constable. If you’d like to brave the gentlemen of the press as we leave, you’re welcome to share a three-week-old frozen pizza I noticed at the bottom of my refrigerator.”

  Hawk smiled. “Thanks, sir. I got the Hunt interview to type up and then I’m gonna get back up home before the snow stops me. I plowed the trail this morning, but it won’t last long.”

  Craig shrugged as though he hadn’t meant the invitation, and Hawk left the room and shut the door. So the frozen pizza was going to have to be eaten alone. A beer in Siding Twenty-three was out of the question too, with all these newshounds filling up the town. Craig McGee sighed and went to fetch his things. The psycho wasn’t his problem anymore. Facing another night in his big empty house with its big empty refrigerator was.

  27

  There was only one TV and video store in Bootle, but it was on the main street with a big window on to the sidewalk. Seven TVs were going in that window and three of them had the same thing on the screen.

  Calvin Bitterhand was distraught. Silver had ignited. The man on the three screens was telling how the town was in the shadow of some terrible murderer. Calvin could read the words easily on his lips, though there was no sound here in the street. In fact, he could read them even when his face was turned away from the camera. The TV man standing in the snow looked pretty pleased about the whole thing for someone who kept saying the word terribl
e. It was too late. He wasn’t going to make it in time. He slumped forward and let his forehead touch the glass as he watched. The pictures were back inside now, of a woman with a stupid face like a painted doll sitting at a desk with a box floating up above her left shoulder that said SKI TOWN HORROR.

  Calvin stood erect and walked away from the store window. He had 120 miles still to go. There wasn’t time. He shuffled down the sidewalk and past a bar, the sour, warm aroma of beer floating out to him as someone opened the door and entered. Maybe he should just give up. Just panhandle some dollars, go in that bar and get wasted, and let whatever was going to happen take its course. What did he care? He was an old man. He would be dead before the thing that was upon them could ever make its real mark on the world. And he was tired. His powers were returning, but they were slow and rusty and he was not pleased to be using them again. He stopped and leaned against a snowy hydrant. He could get there faster, of course, but he would have to prepare. And what if that preparation robbed him of the strength to do what he must on arrival? He made a decision.

  He closed his eyes and prayed silently to the Great Spirit to forgive him for what he was about to do. He could carry on no longer, and his eyes filled with tears that found their way out of his tightly shut lids as he faced his failure. He opened his eyes and choked back a sob.

  Up ahead, the door of a food store burst open and two little girls ran out into the snow ahead of their harassed and laden mother. They slid along the sidewalk as best they could, foiling snow boots designed to stop them doing that very thing. Their laughter as they stalled and stumbled carried in the evening air like lark song. Calvin sniffed away his tears, wiped his nose with the back of his hand and braced himself to beg from their mother.

  She would be worth a couple of dollars. Just to be rid of him and get her groceries into the car. He’d learned that one in Calgary. Get them when they couldn’t walk away from you. A bus line, people paying a cab driver, girls waiting for their dates. Any time they were forced to confront a man who had less than they had and couldn’t escape from his pleading eyes. And those big brown bags of food were the perfect things to make her feel bad about a man who might not have eaten for days. As he assumed the posture of a beggar, the smaller of the girls took a run and managed to complete a huge slide along the icy sidewalk, stopping right in front of him, her cheeks ruddy from the cold, her eyes shining under her red woolen cap. She couldn’t have been more than five or six years old.