The Devil's Dust

by C. B. Forrest

Madsen and McKelvey are standing now, zipping their coats. They both watch Nolan’s face in an attempt to decipher the one-sided conversation. Nolan hangs up the phone and turns to them.

  “Chief never showed at the funeral home.”

  “I thought you said he was going to see Dr. Nichols after you checked on Wade Garson’s place,” McKelvey says.

  Nolan shakes his head. “That’s what the Chief told me. But Dr. Nichols said he’s been alone all morning. Just him and Wade Garson’s body.”

  Twenty-Six

  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. McKelvey is trying to recall a biblical verse that he likely never even learned in the first place. His parents were not religious, despite the fact that like most of the mining families, getting dressed up to attend Sunday services was just another part of life. It was like going to the grocery store, a weekly routine. His parents never read the bible or said prayers or even talked about the concept of God. McKelvey remembers how his father hated putting on a shirt and tie, standing there in the bathroom at the mirror, cursing a cloud of blue as his thick fingers attempted to create a knot. Inevitably, his mother would gently insert herself into the situation and close the loop on a knot that Grey McKelvey would then rip open the moment they sat in the car following the service.

  What does the saying mean to Celluci and Gallagher, he wonders. Dust to dust; this can’t be a reference to methamphetamine. Or could it be? It could mean anything. McKelvey thinks about the pieces of the puzzle as he drives the cruiser over to Carl Levesque’s address. It is not yet noon and the sun burns somewhere behind a quilt of misty grey gauze. The streets are thickly packed with snow, and due to budget cuts the plough has only been out once or twice. The driving is slow. He gets stuck twice on Main Street and has to reverse and take another run. The snow has stopped for now, but there is more in the air. This is just the storm stopping to catch its breath. McKelvey figures a foot and a half has fallen so far.

  He pulls in behind Carl Levesque’s big black Caddy. He watches the curtains closed across the front windows for signs of movement. Nothing. McKelvey looks around the cruiser for something, anything, to hold in his hands, a prop. He feels like a man half-dressed, the uniform shirt and police jacket against his blue jeans. He pops the glove compartment and finds a six-inch flashlight in metal casing. It will do.

  McKelvey is about to open the door when he remembers the radio. He decides to follow protocol and call in his location, as much out of curiosity to hear this unseen woman’s voice.

  “McKelvey here,” he says, depressing the talk bar on the mic. “At 26 Hard Rock Way. Over.”

  The radio snaps and pops. Then silence. He hangs the mic on the hook, wondering if this Shirley Murdoch woman is off duty. He is standing outside the cruiser adjusting his jacket when her voice booms eerily from the ether.

  “Well, howdy there, good to meet you, Mr. McKeller.”

  “McKelvey,” he corrects, leaning across the seat.

  “I’ve heard all about you,” she almost sings.

  “Only the rumours, I hope.”

  She sniggers. “Welcome aboard. Ten-four on your location.”

  He hangs up the mic again and heads to the front door.

  Carl Levesque has no hair. That is to say, he has even less hair than the thinning hair he presents to the world. Having roused him from bed with repeated pounding on the door, McKelvey discovers a man who is almost unrecognizable from the character he plays each day on the streets of Ste. Bernadette. Levesque opens the door and squints bleary-eyed into the day. He holds the door with one hand and the edges of a ratty, worn housecoat — closed almost, but not quite — across his girth with the other.

  “Charlie, Charlie, well what’s the pleasure?” he says. His voice is thick with phlegm, and he is not wearing a partial plate. He is missing three front teeth. “I hear you’re working for Saint B’s finest these days. I sure hope I don’t have some unpaid parking tickets you want to talk to me about.”

  It is obvious now the man wears a piece of false hair to cover the biggest area of balding. Without it, he looks somehow stark and sickly, a cancer patient. The sparse hair that remains is wispy as a baby’s down.

  “Can we chat inside,” McKelvey says, but it is not a question, and he’s already pushing his way in.

  Levesque retreats into his messy living room as McKelvey moves forward. Empty beer bottles and ashtrays and dirty dishes fill every possible free space, from shelves to the coffee table, the tops of the speakers from an old RadioShack stereo system. The house reeks of cigarette smoke so thickly that McKelvey feels once and for all cured of the habit for life. The room makes McKelvey’s sparse and spartan bachelor existence back in Toronto all the more appealing.

  “You look so serious there Charlie, Jesus,” Levesque says, and tries to laugh his salesman’s laugh as he fumbles in his housecoat pockets for cigarettes and a lighter.

  “It’s pretty serious, Carl. You should sit down.”

  Levesque tosses some old newspapers and magazines to the floor and sits on his couch. McKelvey stands, both because he doesn’t want to make contact with any of the filthy furniture and because he wants the physical supremacy here. Levesque lights a cigarette with a shaking hand and draws hard.

  “You nervous about something?” McKelvey asks.

  Levesque laughs, but it doesn’t work. He can’t even convince himself.

  “Casey Hartman.” McKelvey says just the name. Then he watches for the truth in Levesque’s eyes, the way he has done a thousand times as a beat cop, working Hold-Up, asking the questions and watching for the physical reaction. Everything, the truth of the world, is in the eyes.

  “What’s that little cock-tease saying?” Levesque says.

  “First of all, her father wants to kill you,” McKelvey says. “You can thank me for getting here first. Second, she said you gave her pot and meth. We’ve got the evidence back at the station and we’re interviewing her as we speak.”

  “She gave me meth, more like it, brother. Or tried to. Listen, don’t believe the whole innocent-little-girl routine. I never made her do anything she didn’t want to do. So sue me for taking what I can get, if you know what I mean.” As he says this, he pokes his tongue against his cheek in a crude gesture.

  McKelvey has the flashlight from his pocket in one liquid motion, the same response and action as though it were his sidearm. He pushes Levesque’s head back with one hand and jams the flashlight into the man’s mouth with the other. Levesque’s eyes bulge just like the eyes of Wade Garson’s dog when McKelvey shoved the rock in his yap. Levesque’s arms flail as he attempts to push McKelvey off, but he has no strength; he is as weak as a child.

  “Do you like that?” McKelvey says, and he is on top of Levesque now, pushing down, his own teeth clenched, the anger rushing forward, the injustice of his son’s death, Jessie and his granddaughter Emilie, all the girls of this world unsafe as long as predators like Carl Levesque roam the streets, and it’s not fair, it’s just not goddamned fair.

  It is within the heat and the flash of this anger and violence that McKelvey finds he is above and beyond himself, looking down at the scene, and the world is muted — there is only the rush of blood in his ears. This is who and what he is. This, right here, is the very gist of Charlie McKelvey. The propensity. The ability. The willingness. The lapse between spark and fire may have grown with the years, but it hardly matters. It has defined him, this aspect of his nature, it has frightened Caroline and Gavin, it is responsible for the lack of advancement in his long career. He sees within this moment something new, or at least something old seen from a new angle, and the words from Peggy’s poem come back to him. He wants to help, not hinder, educate rather than annihilate. It is to pause and do the exact opposite of a man’s very nature that requires true strength. And he wonders if it is too late to change …

  McKelvey eases back, releases his grip, pulls the flashlight from Levesque’s mouth like a dentist finished with a difficult procedure. Sweat has form
ed on McKelvey’s forehead and runs down his cheek to his chin. His heart throbs. As always, he is left thrumming once the adrenalin begins to ebb.

  “I should sue your ass off, sue the whole fucking municipality,” Levesque spits, a hand moving to his split lip, blood staining the teeth that aren’t missing. “That chick is sixteen or seventeen, so you’ve got nothing on me.”

  “Shut up, Carl,” McKelvey says. He spots a coiled white tube sock on the floor by the couch and picks it up. He tosses it at Levesque. “Wipe your mouth,” he says.

  Levesque dabs the dirty sock against his lip and holds it out to look at the blood like a kid fascinated with his own nosebleed. He reaches with a shaking hand for the cigarette burning in the ashtray and takes a long haul.

  “Fuck this town, man.” Levesque laughs, and this time the laughter must be genuine, for it comes with a new darkness and weariness. Gone are the false singalong clichés of success and positivity. “I should be almost retired, and here I am in Shitsville getting assaulted by a tenant-slash-geriatric part-time cop, getting reamed by the town on taxes, the Indians circling around ready to scalp me …”

  McKelvey moves to a La-Z-Boy across from the couch and pushes a few magazines to the floor. He sits and gets his breathing back in rhythm. The arms of the chair are pocked with blackened cigarette burns where he imagines Levesque has fallen asleep in his underwear on so many nights.

  “Tell me about the girl,” McKelvey says. “Before her father shows up here and removes your head from your body.”

  Levesque squashes the cigarette, knocking a few old butts out of the ashtray. “I’ve got a little gun, so I’m not too worried.”

  McKelvey levels a dead stare at him. “Show me,” he says.

  “Well, maybe I’m just joking, who knows.”

  “The girl,” McKelvey says. “What happened?”

  “I saw her at the laundromat with some friends. We all shared a joint on a cold and lonely night.” He raises his hands in mock arrest. “I told her if she wanted to, you know, smoke a little more some time, to give me a call. And she did. And we did.”

  “What about the stuff in the foil?”

  “That was hers, buddy, not mine. I’ll swear on three fucking bibles. She showed me that stuff. She seemed to be bragging and scared at the same time. Said she got it from that kid who stabbed his pal. Scotty Cooper. They smoked some of it in his garage. She didn’t really want to smoke it, I could tell. And I’ve done a lot of stupid things, but I’m not gonna try that shit. So I dumped the powder in the toilet. And she went home.”

  “With one of your joints in her coat pocket,” McKelvey says. “That her father found.”

  “Just my luck,” Levesque says, and shrugs.

  McKelvey watches the man, and he leans toward believing him.

  “You’re in a lot of trouble, Carl,” McKelvey says, “and I’m the friendliest guy you’re going to see for a while. Why don’t you tell me about your troubles. And tell me where you think these kids are getting meth around here.”

  Levesque runs the fingers of a hand over the top of his head, and the fingers work to gather what remains of the hair, a farmer searching for wheat in a field of drought.

  “It’s no secret I’m working on a land deal with the folks at Big Water. With the chief there and his nephew, the economic development officer. I’m a little over-extended. I told them I had all the land leases for the two hundred acres they’ve got their eye on for a casino and resort.”

  “They spotted you some dough?”

  Levesque nods. “Finder’s fee and whatnot. The rest is due the day I transfer over all the deeds to those little shitboxes your people lived in for half a century.”

  “And you can’t deliver because you don’t actually hold all the deeds, right?”

  “I’m working on it,” Levesque says, and now beams his old salesman’s smile. It comes off as creepy and sad, what with the bloody lip and lack of dentures. “As for where the meth is coming from, you got me, brother. I admit it, I smoke a little of the weed, probably drink more beer than I should. And Christ knows I smoke too many of these goddamned things,” he says, and lights a new cigarette. “You ask Laney down at the arcade? She’s got her eye on those kids closer than anybody. You ask me, that place is a hub of all kinds of illicit action.”

  “Wade Garson,” McKelvey says. “What do you make of his death?”

  Levesque finds the sock beside him on the couch and dabs at some fresh blood forming at the split in his lip. He tilts his head a little to the side, considering the question.

  “Well, that’s for you and your tag-along Nolan to figure out, isn’t it?” he says. And then smiles his ghastly smile, and adds, “One silver lining in all of this seems to be that the more crime we have, the more inclined folks are to sign away their homes to dependable old Carl. And at bargain basement prices, too.”

  McKelvey stands. He bites back against the surge of impulse to give the bald-headed bastard one more shot on the chin for all of Ste. Bernadette.

  “Thanks for your time,” he says. “We’ll be in touch if we have more questions. And listen, Carl. Do yourself a favour. Stay under the radar while we talk to Casey Hartman and her father. It might just save your life.”

  Levesque looks at the bloodied sock in his hand and nods.

  “You might not have broken any laws by chasing after that girl,” McKelvey adds, “but there’s the moral issue. The kids in this town are lost. The last thing they need is someone preying on them.”

  “Save your sermon, Charlie. And next time you come over to give me a wakeup call, you better have a warrant and a gun.”

  “Is that a threat, Carl?” McKelvey says, and stares.

  Levesque spreads his hands wide in a benign gesture, and says, “Forewarned is forearmed.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Constable Ed Nolan sits beside the bed with a bowl of steaming vegetable soup and a cloth napkin to catch the liquid that inevitably dribbles from his father’s mouth. The room is so stale, so ripe with his father’s sour body odour, that he lights wooden matches and lets the sulphur change the taste in the air. He knows he should give his father a full bath, at the very least a sponge bath. But he seems immobilized by the question at hand: when? When will he finally make the call and have his father taken away to an institution? Promises and pledges seem meaningless now, but he feels the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder still, the look in his eyes.

  “Dad,” he says. “We have big problems here. And a storm coming back in.” He looks at his father, skin and bones, and wonders if the man can hear and think and understand anything.

  “Can you understand me?”

  There is nothing.

  “I have to go again now. I have to go and talk to my chief. You remember Chief Gallagher. He may need some help, Dad. We all might.”

  Nolan sets the bowl of soup on the night table, leans down and brushes aside some grey hair, dry as broom bristles, and he kisses his father on the forehead.

  Twenty-Eight

  Madsen is in the middle of a circuitous argument on a cellphone with a bad connection when she hears someone entering the squad room. She turns, the phone cradled between ear and shoulder, and waves at McKelvey.

  “I have to go,” she says. “No. I have work to do. Yes, it is more important, actually. Anything is more important right now than replaying this same conversation over and over again. Okay. Yes. Goodbye.”

  She flips the phone shut and tosses it on the desk. She leans back in the chair and grabs her hair and pulls.

  “God give me strength.”

  “You want me to come back in a little bit?”

  She likes the older man’s chivalry, though she would never admit the fact. She would also kill for a big bathtub, a bottle of good red wine, a week off from work … and her personal life magically figured out and back on track.

  “No,” she says. “You just caught me in the middle of acting out the cliché. You know, the one where the police of
ficer is selfish, career-obsessed, emotionally closed up?”

  “Ah, yes,” McKelvey says, sitting down in Chief Gallagher’s chair. “I know it well. At least you’re not trying to have that conversation from a bar with a bunch of laughter in the background.”

  She smiles at the shared understanding. McKelvey is one of the last of his breed, she knows, the cops who didn’t go to college or university, the tradesmen who earned their honorary degrees on the streets and in patrol cars. Despite the age gap, there is a mutual understanding of territory and glossary, and she feels somehow more at ease simply in his presence. They don’t need to say anything. It’s all there for them in the work, in this investigation, the details, getting it right. This is their relationship. They are married to this.

  “I probably picked the absolute worst time to volunteer for an assignment in the middle of nowhere, I’ll admit that much,” she says, sitting up and gathering the notes and file folders on the desk. “He keeps accusing me of running anyway. Imagine that.”

  McKelvey gives her a little smile as though he knows of what she speaks, but that’s all. And once again everything is communicated in that smile and those blue eyes, the whole truth of the world they know and share. The world that no spouse or child or parent can ever understand unless they, too, have carried the badge.

  “Casey Hartman didn’t get the meth from Carl Levesque,” Madsen says, diving back into the work. “She got it from Scotty Cooper. Took a lot to pull that from her, I think she has a big crush on this Cooper kid. Guess he was the cat’s ass in the high school, always had a little pot and some pills. Anyway, she did say that Levesque gave her a joint and tried to fool around. She was pretty grossed out by that. She figured she could score a few joints for her and her friends and be a hero.”

  “That confirms his story,” McKelvey says. And he goes to say something else but he stops to search for the right words.