Omand's Creek: A gripping crime thriller packed with mystery and suspense

by Don Macdonald

  “What do you know about Charlie Osborne and the urban reserve project?” Shelter asked.

  “Charlie and I have a lot of history, none of it good,” she said, pursing her lips. “He’s gotten involved in a lot of shit, and I don’t trust him. But the band council is talking up the urban reserve, and it’s been good for other communities. We’ve been asking for more visibility on the finances.”

  “When you say he’s involved in a lot of shit, like what kind of shit?”

  She looked at him and shook her head with a grim smile. “That’s our business.”

  “But you’re worried about the urban reserve project financing?”

  “I’m always worried when it comes to money.”

  “Crystal made several calls to the reserve to a number belonging to Joseph Bear. That’s your line?”

  Bear nodded.

  “You knew Bill Craig had been selected as the developer of the urban reserve. You told that to Crystal.”

  Doris looked down at the coffee mug she was cupping in her hands. She raised her eyes to meet Shelter’s and nodded. “Crystal started looking into the court records and found some divorce papers,” she said. “We were preparing a file to go to the band council and the police.”

  “Crystal also told you about a party at the Bond Hotel?” Shelter asked. “About Monica Spence being there?”

  Again, Doris nodded. “It was all in the file.”

  “That’s why she was so upset when she left that day?”

  “No, she was upset when she got here. You have to remember that Crystal came up after her mother committed suicide. She was with her grandmother for two days before she went back to Winnipeg. The next thing we heard was the news she’d been killed.”

  “What did they talk about during those days?”

  “Her grandmother won’t tell me, but she hasn’t been eating, and she spends her time praying.”

  “Did you talk to Crystal before she left?”

  Doris shook her head. “She just got in her car and was gone.”

  “What’s her grandmother’s name?” Shelter asked.

  “Mary Alexander.”

  “She’s not well,” Nicki said.

  Shelter looked to Doris Bear and saw that her face had become clouded with concern. “She’s been weak ever since we told her about Anne committing suicide.”

  They walked to Mary Alexander’s house. The road went from gravel to rutted dirt track shaded by trees. They followed a bend, and when it straightened, Shelter could see where it came to an abrupt end at a rough shack. When he saw the dilapidated condition of the cabin, he was concerned for the old woman’s well-being, especially during the brutal winters. He couldn’t see any insulation to keep out the cold.

  “The band has tried to get her into a new home, but she won’t move,” Doris whispered as they approached the house.

  Only bits of white paint remained on the walls, and the roof had patches of emerald-coloured moss. A stove pipe jutted from its peak. Shelter spotted an outhouse in the rear and noted abandoned objects strewn around the grounds: a rusted lawn mower, an ancient drum washing machine, and in the high grass, the hulk of a seventies vintage Dodge Dart, its engine removed.

  Doris tapped on the screen door and called out to Mary Alexander in Ojibwe. She entered without waiting for a reply. Shelter and Nicki held back, waiting on the stairs. The wind rustled the poplar leaves, and a cicada gave a high-pitched whine that grew in intensity and then was gone. Shelter could hear Doris speaking to the old woman in low tones but couldn’t make out the words. The contrast between the sunshine and the gloom of the room beyond the screen door made it impossible to see inside.

  After a couple of minutes, Doris appeared, nodded and pushed the door open. Shelter followed Nicki into the cabin. The room was cool and almost dark, the windows covered with heavy curtains. Shelter smelled something sour, and his attention was drawn to a thin, congested cough to his right. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the two women sitting close to one another. Doris, perched on the end of a couch, held the hand of an old woman who was made even smaller by the massive armchair where she sat.

  Nicki advanced toward her grandmother, and Doris whispered something in Ojibwe. Mary released Doris’s hand and raised a thin arm to Nicki, who knelt before her. The old woman took Nicki’s face in her hands, looked into her eyes and said something Shelter couldn’t understand. “Noozhishenh,” Doris repeated. “My grandchild.” The old woman pulled Nicki close, kissed her cheek and wrapped her thin arms around her neck, hugging her for a long minute. The skin on her hands was translucent, the knuckles knobby.

  When the woman released her, Nicki was sobbing. Doris moved down the couch, making space for Nicki, and then looked up and nodded to Shelter to come forward. Again, she spoke quietly in Ojibwe. He bent, shook her hand and, smiling, introduced himself. He noticed for the first time that her pupils were cloudy.

  “Bring this chair,” Mary said in English, pointing to a straight-back chair positioned against the wall on the other side of the room.

  The main living space was open, with a dining room table beside a pot-bellied, wood-burning stove in the middle and the kitchen in the back. Three closed doors along one side of the house would be bedrooms and a bathroom.

  Mary held Nicki’s hand and spoke to her quietly, pronouncing the words slowly. “Now, you will come and stay with me.” Her face was deeply lined, and her grey, braided hair ran down her back. A spasm of coughing wracked her body under the shawl she wore despite the heat. Nicki used the back of her hand to wipe away her tears and nodded.

  Mary reached out and caressed Nicki’s cheek. “When Crystal came, she brought me a picture of you and your mother. I see her in you.”

  “I’m sorry our mother couldn’t be with us.”

  “Her spirit has been with me since she was taken from us.”

  Shelter thought about Crystal and Nicki’s mother. Her efforts to get Crystal back after she’d been adopted. The descent into addiction and finally suicide. Why had she left Mary and this reserve in the first place? And why had she never returned? He cleared his throat, and the three women turned their heads.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I must ask you some questions about Crystal to help us find whoever hurt her.” The old woman nodded. She kept Nicki’s hand gripped in both hers. “I understand Crystal came to visit you on a few occasions. I want to ask you about the last time, about ten days ago. What do you remember about the visit?”

  She released Nicki’s hand and began playing with a corner of the shawl. She took a long time before answering. When she did, the words came slowly.

  “Crystal was upset,” she said, glancing at Nicki, who nodded for her to go on. “We sat together here, and then when the moon was high, we went outside, and I burned sweetgrass and we prayed together to the creator. She could not sleep, and we talked through the night.”

  “Talked about what?”

  “Many things. My parents. The old ways. The residential school where we were sent.” She looked at Doris and then Nicki. “And about Anne, her mother. Stories of how she was when she was young and of how she was taken from me.”

  “May I ask what happened with your daughter? Why was she taken away?” Shelter asked.

  She bowed her head. She had an embroidered handkerchief hidden in the sleeve of her blouse, and she brought it out, touching it to her lips.

  Shelter waited. “Perhaps we could...”

  The old woman interrupted him. “Anne was very young. Still a child.” She stopped, and Doris spoke to her in Ojibwe in an encouraging way. She began again in a quiet but clear voice. “It was a very cold night, winter. It was late because she’d been to the hockey game at the arena.” She was wringing the handkerchief, her eyes on her hands.

  “Anne told me later that a car came up beside her, and a man offered to drive her home, a white man. She didn’t want to, but it was so cold.” Mary raised her eyes to meet Shelter’s, and he felt his stomach tighten wit
h a sensation that was something like fear. “He didn’t take her home.”

  Shelter nodded for her to go on. “He was drunk, and Anne told me he only laughed when she begged him to take her home. He said her parents would never find her if she didn’t do as he said or if she told anyone after. And he showed her a gun.”

  Now she stopped for a long time. Shelter could hear the whine of the cicada again. He glanced at Nicki. Her eyes were locked on her grandmother.

  “He made her go to the backseat and take off her clothes. Anne was a virgin.”

  The cicada stopped, and the room was silent except for the distant sound of the wind stirring poplar leaves.

  “When she was late, we knew she was pregnant. They found Anne a place in a school in Winnipeg, and she went there until it was time for the baby to come. They took the baby, and Anne stayed in Winnipeg. She never came back here.”

  Nicki was crying, and Shelter was at a loss. After a while he managed, “This is what you told Crystal?”

  “Yes. She was very angry. She wanted to know who the man was.”

  “You know who he is?” Shelter asked.

  “Not the name. But he is in the picture. We looked at it together. I pointed to him.”

  The picture? Shelter was confused. Did she mean the picture from the Bond Hotel? Could Crystal have shown it to her on that last visit? The only white man in that photo was Bill Craig. Could he have been on the reserve in the 1980s? Maybe working on a construction project? His age made it possible, but it seemed implausible.

  “A picture taken in a hotel room?” he asked the old woman.

  “Hotel room? No. The picture here, on the wall in the hockey arena.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Mary Alexander hobbled to the car with one hand on a cane and the other on Doris Bear’s arm. Shelter, who had made the ten-minute walk back to Doris’s house to get the car, held the passenger door while Mary awkwardly climbed in and got settled.

  The arena was a modest structure that dated from the seventies. Shelter had been in dozens of similar buildings as a teenager when he was playing hockey. The entrance hall was built of cinder blocks. Benches ran along the walls, where you could pull on your skates. At the height of summer, all was quiet. A janitor was probably dozing in an office somewhere. But it wouldn’t be long before they began making ice for late-summer hockey camps and practices in preparation for the season.

  At the end of the room, a set of steel doors led to the rink. To the left, stairs descended to what Shelter knew would be the dressing rooms and showers. Doris steered Mary to a staircase leading to a second floor. The old woman made slow progress upward, taking the stairs with the same foot each time and stopping to rest halfway. At the top, Doris flipped a light switch, revealing a bar and restaurant area with picture windows overlooking the rink. During the hockey season, parents could have a beer or coffee and a bite to eat while they watched a game or practice. Now, chairs were upturned on tables and dishes, glasses and equipment stowed.

  A trophy case stood in the far corner beside the bar. On the walls were dozens of framed photos of hockey teams from years past. Mary led the way toward the trophy case, stopping in front of the second to last column of pictures on the wall. She moved closer, her eyes only a few millimetres from the middle picture in a column of three. Giving a slight shake of her head, she stepped to her right to examine the next one in the row. She tilted her head, looking at the photo above.

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the image.

  Shelter, Nicki and Doris gathered around the old woman to peer at the picture. Yellowed and dated from many decades before, it captured a team of smiling teenage boys in their hockey equipment. They were grouped haphazardly on the ice after the final whistle of a championship game. One group of boys kneeled or sat on the ice in a semi-circle around a trophy, while another row of players stood behind. Some of the boys were waving or giving a thumbs-up. Doris pointed to a boy standing in the middle with a C on his jersey. “Is that Charlie Osborne? It is. I’m sure of it.”

  But Shelter’s attention was elsewhere. His eyes had been drawn to a young man standing in a long coat to the left of the celebrating players. He was taller than the tallest of the boys, even in their skates, and was obviously the team coach. The thick neck and barrel chest, visible despite the coat, had remained through the years, even as the other features had been remoulded by time.

  The word came out of Shelter’s throat in a long, low, guttural exhalation. “Jesus.”

  Nicki turned to look at him. “What?”

  Shelter was too shocked to answer.

  “What is it?” Doris asked.

  He raised a hand and with a finger touched the glass under the face of the man in the picture. “This is Gordy Taylor.”

  Nicki looked at the picture and then turned her head with a jerk to look at Shelter again.

  Shelter’s stomach was clenched, and his heart was pounding. He had to open his mouth to catch his breath. He looked down at Mary, whose head was bowed. It was Doris who spoke to her, asking a question in Ojibwe. The answer came out in a few grunted syllables.

  Doris’s finger moved across the glass like on a Ouija board until it came to rest under Taylor’s face. She asked Mary a question.

  The old woman glanced up and gave a one-word affirmation.

  “This is the man who hurt Anne,” Doris said.

  Shelter nodded as he studied someone else in the photo, another man standing on the other side of the semi-circle of boys. Shelter recognized him as well. It was a young Ted Wright, the priest who’d been with Gordy Taylor at Crystal Rempel’s memorial service. He turned and spoke directly to Mary. “You showed this picture to Crystal, and she recognized this man, yes?” he said, pointing to Taylor.

  She nodded and spoke in Ojibwe. The only word Shelter could understand was “Crystal.”

  “Crystal knew the policeman,” Doris translated.

  “What did Crystal do when she realized this was the man who had hurt her mother?” Shelter asked.

  Mary answered in English. “She left for Winnipeg.”

  All three men, Gordy Taylor, Charlie Osborne and the priest, Ted Wright, together in the same place, at the same time. Shelter stepped away from the wall and turned to face the three women. He could tell from the expression on Nicki’s face that she was in a rage. Shelter urged Nicki and Doris to remain calm. It was essential for them not to discuss what they’d discovered with anyone.

  He went down the stairs and found the caretaker. He showed his ID and asked him to accompany him up to the restaurant. The caretaker took down the photo and gave it to Shelter. The detective turned to the women.

  “Let’s get you home,” he said, looking from Doris to Mary.

  The car was quiet on the way back to Mary’s house. Shelter was lost in his thoughts, considering the chain of events and weighing his options. Gordy Taylor would have been a young RCMP officer stationed at Lone Pine at the time the picture was taken. But how would you prove he’d raped Anne Alexander thirty years ago? There would be no physical evidence, just the word of an elderly woman against that of Winnipeg’s chief of police, one of the most respected men in the province.

  Shelter knew Crystal had been full of anger over her mother’s suicide. She’d probably confronted Taylor as a rapist and threatened to go public. The media coverage alone would have been enough to ruin his reputation just as he was preparing to retire. Was it enough to make Taylor a murderer? Shelter didn’t want to believe it. But Taylor knew the M.O. used in the Monica Spence killing, and he was a crack shot with a rifle. He thought back to Taylor’s intense interest in the case, the leaks to the media. What role had the priest and Charlie Osborne played in the killing of Crystal Rempel, if any? Was it even connected to Crystal’s mother — the rape and adoption all those years ago? Or was it still the land deal in central Winnipeg that held the key?

  After helping Mary inside and into her easy chair, Shelter spoke to Doris outside with Nicki looking on.


  “I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something.” They shook hands. “Thank you for everything, and please keep this to yourself until you hear from me.”

  When Nicki was in the car, Shelter stuck his head through the driver side door and said he had to call his boss in Winnipeg. She stared straight ahead, not acknowledging him. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest, and her face was fixed in a tight, fierce expression. Shelter walked to the tree line, dialling. MacIsaac picked up on the third ring with his usual abrupt “Yup.”

  Shelter filled him in about Gordy Taylor and the photo in the arena. “Neil, we’re going to have to bring him in.”

  The line was silent as MacIsaac digested the news. “You want to bring Taylor in as a homicide suspect on the basis of a thirty-year-old picture and the word of some old lady? Are you fucking crazy?”

  Shelter struggled to keep calm. “Crystal Rempel knew about the rape allegation, and she was heading back to Winnipeg to confront him…”

  MacIsaac cut him off. “You know what kind of a shit storm you’re talking about? We can’t bring him in. You don’t have nearly enough. And it’s not that easy. We’d have to get the professional standards unit involved, and the justice minister. Jesus!”

  “Neil, we can’t wait. If he hears about…”

  “I said no. We need more evidence.”

  Shelter felt his face get hot and the muscles in his neck tighten. “You know what I think, Neil? I think you’re worried about not getting the chief’s job.” He stopped himself from going further. “We’ve got to get him off the street.”

  When MacIsaac spoke again, his tone was low-pitched and menacing. “Be in my office at eight tomorrow morning. Until then, no action. You got it?”

  Shelter’s jaw was clenched, and his back was drenched in sweat. He knew he’d taken it too far in accusing MacIsaac of ulterior motives.