Bones Are Forever tb-15

by Kathy Reichs

  “What have you learned?” Ryan signaled for a refill.

  “I’ve learned why bling is so bloody expensive. First you have to find the diamonds. Then you have to do a feasibility study to determine how much the mine will cost and how to build it. Then there’s the red tape: environmental agreements, land-use permits, water licenses, impact-benefit agreements, socioeconomic agreements. Approval involves dealing with federal, territorial, and aboriginal governments, regulatory agencies, landowners—everyone from the local farmer right up to the pope.”

  The waitress poured Ryan’s coffee.

  “Then you have to build the mine, which, in this climate, is a nightmare. The sites are so isolated that all personnel and supplies have to be flown in or transported over winter roads.”

  “Ice road truckers!”

  “Do you know what it costs to operate an ice road?”

  “I do not.”

  I flipped to a page in my book. “Lupin runs for almost six hundred kilometers, from Tibbitt Lake, east of Yellowknife, to the Lupin mine site in Nunavut. Construction and maintenance cost roughly six-point-five million dollars annually.” I looked at Ryan. “And the ice roads are only open maybe ten weeks a year.”

  “Big bucks.”

  “That’s just one budget item. Landing strips, power stations, machine shops, sewage and waste disposal, water treatment plants, telephone networks, storage buildings, offices, processing plants. And the workers can’t exactly drive home each night. The mines have to provide housing, food, recreational facilities. A lot of the miners work two-week rotations. That’s a long time to have nothing to do. Listen to this.”

  I gave him no opening to opt out.

  “Ekati construction cost nine hundred million dollars. Diavik cost one-point-three billion—that’s billion—dollars. They drained a whole damn lake!”

  “Isn’t that the kind of thing that infuriates Mr. Squeeters? By the way, I saw him yesterday. When Rainwater and I drove past, Tyne was pulling out of the Giant gold mine.”

  “I thought it was closed.”

  “It is. But there are arsenic issues.”

  “Arsenic?’

  “A by-product of gold production. When the mine shut down, the owners walked, leaving a few zillion tons of the stuff.”

  “Don’t mining companies have to fork over millions up front to cover the cost of cleanup before they’re granted permits to operate?”

  “Ah, the good old days.” Ryan knocked back the last of his coffee. “Listen, if you’re really interested in this stuff, Rainwater says his great-uncle works at the mining recorder’s office, knows everything there is to know on the subject.”

  “Sure, I’ll pop right in on a Sunday.”

  “Rainwater says the old coot practically lives there. He’s a retired geology prof, and the government cooked up some sort of make-work position for him after he retired. Or something like that.”

  “You and Rainwater going to be pen pals when this is over?”

  Ryan raised palms and brows. “What? We’ve been thrown together a lot. Gassing passes the time.” He stood. “Can’t let the grass grow. Keep me in the—”

  “Got it. Loop.”

  So. Lily had blown rehab. Was that the reason Ryan had been so aloof with me? So snarky with Ollie? Not petty jealousy but anguish over his daughter?

  My phone cut me off in midponder. Bergeron. I clicked on.

  “I have a name for you.”

  “THE DESCRIPTORS GENERATED ONLY ONE MATCH. PROBABLY because a root canal in a third molar is extremely uncommon. Eric Skipper, white male, forty-four, residing in Brampton, Ontario at the time of his disappearance.”

  “When did Skipper go into the system?”

  “March eighteenth, 2008. Descriptors were provided by Dr. Herbert Mandel of Brampton.”

  “Did you contact him?”

  “I did. Dr. Mandel informed me that Mr. Skipper had a great deal of dental work, including extractions, restorations, and other root canals. He is sending the record by FedEx.”

  “Who filed the MP report?”

  I heard paper rustle. “Mr. Skipper’s wife, Michelle. Dr. Mandel says she remains a patient.”

  “Did you get her number?”

  Bergeron read it to me, and I jotted it down.

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m an odontologist, Dr. Brennan. Not a detective. From you, I will need the actual X-rays.”

  “Coming your way.”

  “I will call when the ID is confirmed.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Bergeron. I owe you one.”

  “You do, indeed.”

  I called Maureen King. Voice mail.

  It was a nice day. Nothing but sun and temperatures projected to soar into the upper fifties. I decided to visit the coroner’s office.

  * * *

  “Hey, old lady.”

  I was on the walk leading to the Searle Building. I stopped and turned.

  Binny was across Forty-ninth Street, straddling his bike on the courthouse lawn. The tuque had been replaced by a baseball cap sitting low on his brows. Same sweats. Same sneakers.

  “Hey, bozo,” I said.

  “Bozo? That the best you can do?” Underlying the bravado was a tension I hadn’t sensed in our previous encounter.

  “Good morning, Mr. Binny Mind-Your-Own-Business.”

  “You remember good, for a granny.”

  “I’m pretty busy right now.”

  “At least you ain’t covered in doodah.”

  “Nice turn of phrase.”

  Below the bill’s shadow, I saw Binny chew his lip.

  “Do you have something to tell me?”

  “I never got no pancakes.” Eyes skittish.

  I reached into my purse and waggled the muffin I’d pilfered from the breakfast buffet. I know. But meals had been patchy. I wanted backup.

  Binny crossed to me and took my offering. His fingers looked small and brown, digging the cake from its little paper cup. There was a crescent of dirt under each of his nails. When finished with the muffin, he wadded the wrapper and cocked his arm.

  “Whoa, there, twiglet. Thought it was cool to respect the environment.”

  He looked confused. Then, “You talking about the crazy old geezer and his caribou?”

  I raised both brows.

  “Pffff.”

  “So I should lay off the caribou, but it’s cool if I dump my trash in your bed?”

  I held out a palm. Binny rolled his whole head but dropped the wrapper in it.

  Two women passed us on their way into the building. One was young, pushing a stroller. The other had curly white hair and clutched her purse as if bandits hid behind every bush.

  “You need to watch your back, old lady.” Binny spoke quietly, face angled away from mine.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You got a knack for making people mad.”

  “What people?”

  He shrugged a bony shoulder. “I’m just sayin’.”

  “Saying what? You have to make yourself clear.”

  “I don’t have to make myself nothing no old hag says.”

  “Are you talking about Tom Unka and his goons?”

  “I ain’t saying who.”

  “You know things, don’t you, Binny?”

  “The street is my school. I stay low. I keep cool.” He made a downward sweeping gesture with one hand. Laughed.

  ’Ow do you do? My name’s Gavroche.

  “You know anything about the Castain and Scarborough hits?”

  “Assholes also made people mad.”

  “Why?”

  “A patch gotta have one boss.”

  “And that’s Unka now.”

  Binny looked at me from under his ridiculously large bill.

  “Did Unka also kill Annaliese Ruben?”

  The bill tilted downward. “Word is, that was outside.”

  “Who, outside?”

  Binny lifted one sneaker to the pedal of his bike.

 
“Annaliese was my friend, Binny.”

  “Gotta bounce.”

  And he was gone.

  * * *

  King was at her desk, talking on a phone that looked like it dated to the Vietnam era. She did the finger-in-the-air thing, then pointed to a chair.

  I sat.

  “Right. Thanks.” She cradled the receiver.

  To me. “That was the ME in Edmonton. Castain and Scarborough were taken out with nine-millimeters.”

  “Handguns firing jacketed bullets.”

  She nodded. “Whether one or two weapons, neither was the one that killed Beck and his amigo.”

  “The second vic was a guy named Eric Skipper.”

  “What’s his story?”

  I told her what I knew. White, male, Brampton, lots of dental work. “I need to get the X-rays to my odont ASAP.”

  “No problemo. My assistant will scan and transmit them.”

  “She’s working on a Sunday?”

  “Let’s just say she’s keen.”

  I gave her the envelope and Bergeron’s address at the LSJML. “Any word on Ruben?”

  King shook her head.

  “Did you talk to Snook?”

  She was about to respond when the phone shrilled. She put the receiver to her ear. Listened. “What’s his name?” Cupping the mouthpiece, she spoke to me. “You know a Mr. Mind-Your-Own-Business?”

  “It’s a kid named Binny.”

  “Binny Twiller?”

  “The young man did not share his full biographical profile.”

  “Twiller’s outside and wants to talk to you.”

  “Weird. I ran into him on the way in. Why does the name Twiller ring a bell for me?”

  “Merilee Twiller.”

  No cerebral “aha!”

  “Castain’s girlfriend?”

  Of course. Now it made sense.

  “The kid claims word on the street puts Ruben outside the punch-up.”

  “What is he, twelve?”

  “Binny keeps his ear to the ground.”

  “What’s he say about Castain and Scarborough?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not surprising. Anyway, he won’t come in.”

  “How about this? You deal with the X-rays, then phone Michelle Skipper. I’ll see what the kid has on his mind.”

  Binny was doing his usual bike-straddle below a tamarack tree actually showing some green.

  I walked over to him. Under the hat brim, his eyes were skittery. They landed on me a second, then moved on.

  “Tell your cop friends to try Unka’s house.”

  “They did. He’s not there.”

  “Dig deeper.”

  “Thank you, Binny.”

  “You say you got anything from me, I’ll say you’re a pedophile.”

  As before, he rocketed up the block, twig legs pumping the pedals like pistons.

  I returned to King’s office. My envelope was gone from her desk. A few of her questions told me she was still talking to Michelle Skipper.

  I dialed my iPhone.

  “Ryan.”

  “This may sound nuts. But remember the kid I was with on Friday?”

  “Rosemary’s Baby?”

  “He has access to inside information.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He’s Merilee Twiller’s son. And he listens. He just tipped me that Unka has gone to ground at his mother’s house.”

  “Why take the risk of telling you that?”

  “I’m charismatic.”

  “Must be it.”

  “And I gave him a muffin.”

  “We checked Mama’s crib.”

  “Binny said dig deeper.”

  “Those were his words?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks.”

  I debated mentioning Binny’s warning that I watch my back. Decided to wait.

  “Are you still at headquarters?” I asked.

  “Yeah. One of Unka’s goons is going canary.”

  “Why’s he talking?”

  “The cops found a Sig Sauer tucked in his shorts. That violates his parole. Which means losing eight years of the beautiful life.”

  “What’s he trading?”

  “He says Scar owned Castain and Unka owned Scar.”

  “Merilee Twiller thought Unka killed Castain for skimming.”

  “Looks like she got it wrong.”

  “Is your guy going to testify?”

  “We’re discussing the benefits of his doing that.”

  “What’s he say about Ruben?”

  “Denies knowing anything about her.”

  I told Ryan about Eric Skipper and about the ballistics evidence suggesting a different weapon for him and Beck versus the ones used in the Scarborough and Castain hits.

  “Most gang bangers own arsenals,” Ryan said.

  I noticed King hanging up, so I did the same.

  She looked at her notes. “Skipper was a sessional instructor at a small university in Brampton. Had a master’s in environmental ecology or something like that. Applied all over the country but never got an offer for a full-time university position. The wife blames it on arrests dating to Skipper’s student years.”

  “Arrests for what?”

  “Protests. Sit-ins. Rallies. Marches. The guy was a rabid tree hugger. According to the wife, the lack of employment left him with way too much time on his hands.”

  I saw where she was going. “He kept going to protests.”

  “Yep.”

  “One of which was here.”

  “Yep. You want the full story?”

  “Yep.”

  “Ever hear of the Gahcho Kué project?”

  “HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT GAHCHO KUÉ?” SHE ASKED.

  “It’s the new diamond mine De Beers Canada plans to open.”

  “Actually, it’s a joint venture with Mountain Province Diamonds, but close enough.”

  “The project has caused some controversy, right?”

  “Gahcho Kué is the aboriginal name for the Kennady Lake region. I think in some Dene dialect it means Place of the Big Rabbit. The area is lousy with barren-ground caribou and has traditionally been used by the Dene from Lutselk’e and the Métis from Fort Resolution. Back in the day, the Tlicho—or Dogrib Dene—also swung that way.”

  “So objections have mostly come from First Nations groups?”

  She waggled a hand. Maybe yes, maybe no. “But they’ve had a big impact on the process. You want the full-blown?”

  “Hit me.”

  “In 2005 the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board ruled that De Beers’s applications for a land-use permit and water license would require a full environmental-impact study, an EIS. De Beers appealed the decision to the NWT Supreme Court but lost in April 2007.

  “Long story short, in December 2010 De Beers finally submitted its EIS. Last July the review panel ruled that the EIS is in conformity.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning now the panel will read the monster, all eleven thousand pages of it. The review process is expected to be completed by 2013. De Beers hopes to begin production in 2014.”

  “How big is Gahcho Kué?”

  “The proposed mine calls for recovery of four and a half million carats annually. They’ll be working three pipes, 5034, Hearne, and Tuzo, using the open-pit method.”

  “For how long?”

  “I think they put mine life at eleven years.”

  I did some quick math. Given the cost of development, construction, and maintenance, and a very limited life span, the profit in diamond mining had to be monstrous.

  “Where is Kennady Lake?” I asked.

  “Roughly three hundred kilometers north of here. Ninety kilometers southeast of De Beers’s Snap Lake mine.”

  “What does this have to do with Eric Skipper?”

  “Throughout the review process, the panel holds open sessions at the local level, so anyone interested can express his or her opinion.”

  I s
aw where she was going. “Skipper came to Yellowknife for one of these town meetings.”

  “And ended up dead.”

  “What did he plan to say?”

  “Don’t fuck with the caribou.”

  “How long was he here?”

  “He left Brampton on March first. By bus.”

  “Allowing for travel time, that means he was in Yellowknife a few days before he died. Did he get into any trouble while he was here?”

  “Let’s find out.” She dialed, then leaned back. The chair made a sound like an air compressor gasping its last.

  “Hey, Frank. Maureen King.”

  A tinny voice said something I couldn’t make out.

  “I’m good.”

  More tin.

  “Tell her to keep applying heat. She’ll be fine. Listen, do you remember a guy named Eric Skipper? Came from Ontario to speak his piece at a review panel session in March 2008.”

  Tin laughter.

  “Didn’t think so. Do me a favor, run the name? See if anything pops?”

  Tin.

  “No, I’ll wait.”

  She laid the receiver on the blotter.

  To me, “This shouldn’t take long.”

  It took ten minutes. As Frank spoke, King took notes. “Thanks. Have a good one.”

  She said to me, “Skipper made it into the books, all right. On March seventh, 2008, G Division got a call about two guys having a throw-down in a parking lot on Forty-seventh. The responding officers defused the situation and made no arrests. One combatant was Horace Tyne. The other was Eric Skipper.”

  That was a shocker.

  “What were they fighting about?”

  “The incident report consists of two lines.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Tyne sees himself as the savior of the tundra. He and Skipper should have been comrades.”

  Our eyes met. We were on the same page.

  “A little face time with Captain Caribou?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said.

  * * *

  Ryan called as we were pulling into Behchoko. For the first time in days, he sounded energized.

  “We got him.”

  “Unka?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where was he?”

  I looked at King. She gave a thumbs-up.

  “Some kind of root cellar under a barn behind his mother’s house. Looked like goddamn Saddam Hussein crawling out of his spider hole.”

  “You didn’t notice it when you first tossed the place?”