THE TRICKSTER

by Muriel Gray

  “Come, my son. I am Eagle Robe. We must walk together and talk of many things.”

  Running Wolf looked at this man and he seemed familiar. He got up and trotted over to the outstretched hand. The man could read his heart and his thoughts.

  “Yes, I have walked with you before. And your father and your father’s father, and his before him.”

  Billy Hunt struggled inside his wolf spirit to remember when that might have been, but could recall nothing.

  “Your father turned his back on me and would not know me when I came to him often in his animal spirit guide in the night. And your grandfather tried to know me but was not pure enough to make the meeting of spirits. My heart is glad that his son’s son knows me.”

  Billy was speaking now. “My father has an animal guide like mine?”

  “He has the eagle, the most sacred of all. Your father is a great and pure shaman, Running Wolf. He is the keeper.”

  Billy Hunt’s heart suddenly became lighter, and he opened his jaws to pant happily. Eagle Robe turned and walked from the semicircle of tall figures toward the waving trees and the wolf trotted happily at his heels. In his human mind Billy knew that this sleep was too deep to be disturbed, and he smiled at the prospect of the journey with this man he knew and the things he would hear. The river gurgled in the distance behind them and the trees bowed their delicate limbs in the breeze as they walked slowly beneath their shade.

  “People are amazing.”

  Pasqual’s stage whisper was unsubtle, and because of the tone of her remark, which was not one of admiration, Eric Sindon looked around furtively to see if any of the “amazing” people had heard. They hadn’t. They were still milling around the Silver Ski Company Celebrity Ski Extravaganza registration desk by the big arched window like Angie was giving away dollars. In fact, Angie was taking dollars. A lot of dollars.

  These people, here in the deep, carpeted arcade of the Rocky Mountain Chateau, woke up this morning in king-size beds to CNN telling them they were in the most famous ski resort in the western world. They pretended to be horrified by the murders but they knew that if they were part of the celebrity ski tomorrow, there was more than a fair chance of the folks back home seeing them interviewed on national TV.

  Pasqual turned on a huge smile for the line of rich customers and tilted her head to greet the Chateau’s duty manager, who was gliding toward them with a similar smile.

  “Hi. Doin’ great business, I see.”

  Eric smiled weakly but Pasqual was effusive.

  “You bet, Saul. This’ll make Tamarack wince.”

  Saul seemed to want to say something else, and Pasqual arched an eyebrow. He put a hand into an expensive suit pocket. “I hear they’re after your man.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The cops. They’re on the trail of your Indian.”

  Pasqual looked blank. “My Indian?”

  Saul smiled at a wrinkled old trout in a shiny ski suit who was gazing at him from the line. She smiled back and adjusted her expensive, ugly shades.

  “Yeah. That guy Hunt. Heard a rumor from the news guys that were gassing off in the piano bar upstairs last night until three in the morning. They’re saying that he’s on the run and the cops think he’s the killer.”

  Pasqual went cold. A flash of what she’d seen in the trees, the remains of that boy, came back to her so vividly that she felt a thin pipe of vomit trying to slide up her throat. Sam Hunt. She was working beside a guy all these years who at any time could have cut her up into filets and…

  “Sam Hunt?”

  Saul grinned like she’d just made a booking for fifty doctors on conference.

  “Yeah. That’s it. Sam Hunt.”

  “Saul. This is real important. Does anyone else, any of these hacks here, know that Hunt worked for the ski company?”

  Saul looked pleased that he’d affected her with such confidential and important news. “No one knows anything. I told you. I get this stuff being on the spot where the news guys get loaded.”

  “I’m begging you now, Saul. I tell you I’ll work my butt off to fill this goddamn hotel with skiers for the next ten years if you just bear with me. Don’t tell a soul. Please. Not a soul.”

  Saul put on an expression of mock offense. “Hey. Why would I?”

  She nodded, knowing in her heart that if a nothing guy like Saul Jennings knew about it, the whole fucking world would too.

  She turned to see how Eric had handled the news. He was over by the big arched window that looked out onto the Chateau’s frozen lake, his portable phone to his ear and his free hand pressed palm up onto the glass.

  Eric would sort it. Right now she had to check if the dinner preparations were going OK, and the welcome-drinks party people had remembered to put up the Silver Ski Company banners for any cameras that might be there. And, of course, make them put out the company napkins with the nibbles.

  Yeah. Go count some napkins. That would take away the thought of that boy in the trees.

  Maybe.

  Katie had waited last night until four-thirty in the morning to phone Craig. She had nearly called him three times before that, but her mind was doing crazy things and it took a long, lonely night to decide that maybe they should both be crazy together.

  It was hard to make Gerry and Ann go, especially after the visit she’d had from those grim-faced cops that followed McGee’s visit, asking questions that hurt, but mercifully cleaning up the remains of sweet Bart. But she’d convinced them she would be OK. Katie saw in one alarming moment on Gerry’s face that he wasn’t worried about her spending the night alone, but more concerned that Sam might come back. It was no use anymore asking herself how this had come about. It had. Everything had changed, and the only thing to do now was to find a way to deal with it.

  She’d dialed Craig’s home number first, the one he’d written on the back of his card, and there had been no reply. She wasn’t thinking straight yet. A murder investigation didn’t let its investigators go home to cocoa and bed. She called his detachment, and the noisy babble in the background as the guy put her through confirmed that theory.

  “Craig?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Katie Hunt.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Nothing’s changed here. I just need… I just think it would be good to talk about some things.”

  “Now?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He was over in less than fifteen minutes, stopping briefly outside in the falling snow to talk to the guys who were watching the Hunt house. She let him in like they were both doing something wrong, and they braved the kitchen almost as a dare. The floor was shiny where she’d knelt like a peasant and scrubbed the last of the blood off with a bristle brush until her arms ached. Craig said nothing, and sat at her table as though everything were normal.

  The old coffee machine went through its noisy, faltering cycle, and Katie sat down with him while it got on with it.

  “They took photos and then put him in a bag.”

  “Yeah. I know it seems weird. They know what they’re doing.”

  She nodded, staring at the tabletop and playing with a strand of her streaky blond hair. Then she looked up at him with red eyes.

  “Why did your officer write the word Isksaksin?”

  “I thought you might tell me. I don’t know what it means. Well, at least I know you said it means ‘boundary’ or something, but I don’t know what it meant to Daniel.”

  She looked away again, thinking. Then, as if she’d made her mind up about something, she turned back to him. “It’s also the name of a charm. A Kinchuinick charm.”

  “What do you mean? Like a spell?”

  “No. An amulet. A thing you wear.”

  Craig sucked his top lip and bit at the skin. He remained silent, although part of him wanted to shout. Katie got up and went out, leaving him unsure what she was doing. Then she returned with a mess of fax paper and her spectacles and sat down at the table. He ke
pt his eyes on her face. She was going to tell him something she was unsure about, and he wasn’t going to roll any barrels in her way by talking like a cop.

  He needn’t have worried. Katie wanted to talk. Very badly.

  She rustled the paper at him. “It’s a rare amulet. So rare I’ve only ever come across one in my whole career. This stuff is the only research material done on its origins. I had it faxed over from Vancouver yesterday.”

  Craig looked down at the shiny roll of paper tumbling over itself, then back up at Katie Hunt. “The one you’ve seen. It’s around your husband’s neck, isn’t it?”

  She nodded dumbly and they looked at each other for a moment before the silence was broken by the final vulgar slurping of the coffee machine. Katie got up and poured two mugs of unpleasantly weak coffee, then rejoined him at the table. Craig fingered the fax paper.

  “This tell you anything?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Keep it simple. It took me an hour and a half to get through the stuff you gave me yesterday. If it doesn’t start with The suspect stated, I lose it after the second paragraph.”

  She laughed, and Craig brightened involuntarily at the heat she made with that smile. Katie leaned back in her chair and sipped her foul coffee, and either the murky brew or what she was about to say wiped the sun from her face.

  “How about I read you just a bit? I can’t paraphrase. Not well enough.”

  He shrugged, and she rustled the paper, searching for the desired passage.

  “This is an interview recorded in 1959 with a woman elder from a Kinchuinick band in British Columbia. It’s an English translation. She would have spoken in Siouan.”

  “Right.” He tried to sound interested in the academic shit, but Craig McGee just wanted facts.

  Katie opened her spectacles, propped them on her neat nose and started to read in a surprisingly monotone voice. It was unlike her normal singsong tone, and it gave what she was saying a gravitas that he hoped it would deserve.

  “ ‘It is a bad thing and a good thing.’” She looked up at him. “This is the Isksaksin she’s talking about.”

  He nodded. She obviously thought he was a complete fool, but so what?

  Katie continued, “ ‘But mostly it is a bad thing. Only the keeper wears the key and he prays his whole life he is not the one who must use it. I do not know anyone who has the key. This band has no shaman great enough to wear it, but there is one always on earth who does. My husband, Turns Calf Around, was a great medicine man, and he spoke of the evil spirit that the keeper saves us from, but I know nothing of it. They say it is the Trickster, and we make fun of him in stories to stop our fear of him.’”

  Craig was staring at her, a child looking at its teacher. “The Trickster? Like a joker?”

  Katie stopped and fumbled again with the paper that was joined in one long scroll. “Right, this bit… listen.”

  He was listening.

  “ ‘The Trickster is bad and good too. He was good once, long, long ago, in the days when animals spoke and the forests were alive, and he played with men like their brother. Then men tricked him and he became angry and bad, for he is the good and bad in men. He is only what they are and nothing more. Their evil and their good. A mirror that would kill its own reflection. When he is bad he can come only into low animals unless he can steal the power from a great shaman and become himself. Then he can kill as himself. The sight of his form is too terrible to bear. It is worse than the worst wittago.’”

  Craig interrupted. “Sorry. Wittago?”

  She looked at him impatiently. “A fiend made from mud, ice or stones that ate human flesh. Bad medicine men are said to be able to make them.”

  “Neat trick.”

  Katie ignored him, returning to her monotone. “ ‘When he comes now it is winter, for it is said he is of the rock and ice. The rock can hold him and the ice can make him.’”

  Craig watched her silently, and she looked up over the top of her spectacles at him, caught the look in his eyes and put the fax down.

  “I know what you’re thinking. You’re right.”

  Craig was glad she didn’t know what he was thinking. It wasn’t honorable, but it had been the way she pushed her specs up on her nose and tossed her blond hair.

  “What’s that?”

  “You think I’m hiding in this irrelevant, academic, mythology bullshit as therapy. Escaping from the fact that my husband may be a psycho and you want to put him away.”

  “Are you hiding in it?”

  “Yes. Desperately.”

  “It’s not irrelevant bullshit, Katie. Daniel wrote that word for a reason. It was stuck on a photograph.”

  “What photograph?”

  “The photograph of a body. Someone who was murdered twenty years ago. The body had the mark of that thing that your husband wears around its neck. Like it had been burned onto the skin.”

  Katie’s eyes widened. Craig sighed and gazed into the middle distance at nothing in particular.

  “You’re a policeman. Make sense of this.”

  He shrugged, his hands out like a surrender. “Your husband’s a shaman with an iska… iksa… amulet around his neck that keeps away a bad thing called the Trickster. How’d I do?”

  She took her spectacles off and held her forehead in her hand. Her face made him regret the frivolity of his tone. He cursed himself that he was forgetting the circumstances of their conversation. Katie Hunt was looking at him with an expression of utter and total defeat.

  “He’s not a shaman, Craig. He’s a man who likes skiing and bowling, eats celery with a cheese dip while he watches ice hockey on TV and dreams of having a big shiny pickup with chrome roll bars. He gets on with his quiet, simple life and he loves…” she started to cry, softly “… he loves his family more than anything in the world.”

  Craig put out a hand and touched her arm. She snatched it away with a grunt. She sniffed back her tears. “I’m falling for some cop shit here, aren’t I? You’re making me believe that you genuinely want to know about this stuff, and really you just want to know something else.”

  “Like what? They’ve asked you everything already.”

  She was gulping and swallowing, trying to control herself. “I don’t know. I’ve watched Columbo. I know the nice cop is the one who gets the stuff he wants by pretending to be interested in pottery or architecture or shit.”

  It was Craig McGee’s turn to look defeated. His voice was small. “No. I’m not pretending anything. I’m clutching at straws. You want some truth?”

  Katie wiped her nose, scrutinized his face and made a tiny nod. “The stuff there, that fax? If I make the connections that it automatically suggests to me, join up the myths with the facts, it changes everything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Everything. My whole life. Everything I believe in and everything I know to be true. Nothing will make sense anymore, do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “This cup might not be a cup anymore. That window might not look onto your yard anymore. The sun might not necessarily rise in two hours.”

  Katie was just watching him, her eyes full of tears, a thin line of fear. He leaned forward and looked at her with a steady gaze.

  “I can’t allow that to happen, Katie, so I can’t make those connections. I believe this is a cup because I can see it.”

  A tear rolled down her smooth cheek.

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “Back at square one.”

  “But you said that even though you didn’t believe in this, you wanted to know about someone who did.”

  “I’ve changed my mind tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Because even a fanatical belief in all this shit can’t make someone perform the miracle of murdering silently without trace or motive, or leave behind the kind of bizarre clues that we’re dealing with.”

  Katie looked crestfallen. “You’re telling me these murders are impossible.”

>   “Yes. These murders are impossible.”

  “Not even an if or an unless.”

  “Sure. Plenty of those.”

  “Give me one.”

  “Impossible unless your husband or someone else can turn into an animal, kill, turn back into a human and escape.”

  He sat back and looked at her with a challenging glint.

  Katie sighed and glanced toward the window. “I guess the sun will come up OK.”

  “I guess so.”

  They sat miserably and quietly for a long time, and between them sat two cups that were always cups and would still be cups when that sun came up.

  51

  A night in a snow hole so near to town he could sometimes smell the chlorine from the Welcome Inn’s outdoor pool, and they hadn’t found him. But then, nothing the RCMPs had could match his skill. Sure, they would take dogs out and sniff around, maybe pull in some rangers from a nearby national park who thought they knew about tracking. But they would be useless. Though he had spent a lifetime trying to forget it, Sam Hunting Wolf was Kinchuinick, and there were thousands of acres of wild country that he could move through and live in without being found.

  But Sam didn’t want to go far. Katie and Jess and Billy were why his heart still beat, and he had to know he was near enough to get back. In case… in case of what? Why in God’s name would they want to see him again?

  He squinted up through the snow at the ice-crusted rock face and put that thought away. Sam’s body was tingling, his nerves coming back to life as the blood reached his frozen skin. He had stripped naked and waded through the half-frozen Wolf River for a quarter mile, his clothes in a bundle on his head, the floating wedges of ice banging against his torso, just in case the dogs managed to get this far into the forest. No dog would recover his scent now, or any ranger pick up his footprints in the thick snow, even if they found the broken remains of his snow hole. In fact, he was confident no man would find him. But then, it was not men that he feared.

  He could just make out the top of the tunnel arch from down here and knew that if he scaled this last piece of rock he would reach the dark safety of its black interior, a sheltered haven for another night. He had followed the tracks as far as he could, walking on the rails and leaving no prints, but when the tracks ran alongside the Trans-Canada highway for a time Sam was forced back into the forest. He took a tortuous route between the tall lodgepoles that kept him covered, stopping to listen occasionally as the chopper droned overhead or in the distance, presumably looking for him. It was hellish going and had taken him all day, picking his way through the dense, snow-covered deadfall, but it brought him invisibly and safely out beneath a thirty-foot slab of rock that led up to one of the higher tunnel entrances. An entrance far from the road. The cliff was icy and sheer, but for one who had spent a boyhood of climbing such rocks to hide in their deeper crevices, not impossible.