by Peggy Blair
“Celia, it’s Miles O’Malley. How’s the weather up there?”
“Hey, Miles. It’s a balmy minus ten. But there’s another storm on its way. How are things in Ottawa?”
“Heating up in our little corner of the world. Listen, Celia, Charlie Pike’s heading to White Harbour to handle an investigation on the Manomin Bay First Nation. The OPP won’t touch this one, and the RCMP won’t have anything to do with it either. I’m worried about him trying to stickhandle this alone. I’m hoping you can lend a hand.” He described what was going on.
“I don’t know, Miles. I have some family issues to deal with. My mother isn’t well.” Jones lowered her voice while she explained.
“Ah, Celia, I’m so sorry. My God, you’ve had a lot on your plate lately. Which reminds me, Dr. Mann still wants to see you.”
Jones had promised O’Malley for months that she’d speak to the departmental psychiatrist. She’d been involved in a hostage-taking in Cuba, and only a week later was threatened by a knife-wielding man in Ottawa. But she kept cancelling the appointments.
She wondered if she was afraid of what Dr. Mann would tell her. She didn’t have time to deal with post-traumatic stress, not with a young child to look after. She looked at her mother, still fixated on the television. Make that two of them.
She grimaced. “I’ll call him when I get back, I promise. I’m only here until Sunday. Alex took a week off to stay with Beatriz so I could come. But sure, tell Charlie to get hold of me if he needs anything.”
“How’s she doing, that little girl of yours?”
“Her colour is a lot better. The good news is they don’t need to do a heart transplant. Alex says they can replace her mitral valve. But we’re running into all kinds of problems with the bureaucracy. We’ll work it out.”
“When it comes to bureaucrats, nothing surprises me anymore. Let me know if I can do anything to help. Well, listen, Charlie won’t be up there much longer than that himself, Celia. The deputy minister has assured us that, one way or the other, the OPP will take the investigation over this weekend.”
“That sounds ominous,” said Jones. “Have they already forgotten what happened at Ipperwash?”
The police had moved in during the dead of night during a protest at Ipperwash Provincial Park. An unarmed Aboriginal man, Dudley George, was shot by a policeman and later died. The policeman was convicted of criminal negligence.
“They’re treading lightly this time, but the media is probably going to get hold of the story soon,” said O’Malley. “Someone has to tell them to fuck off so Charlie can do his job. Nicely, of course.”
“And you thought of me?” Jones smiled. “That would make it my favourite assignment to date.”
Before she went to law school, Celia Jones was a hostage negotiator with the RCMP. Negotiations required a certain measure of diplomacy. She’d learned the controlled aggression of lawyers as an articling student. She recalled her principal’s written correspondence with another solicitor that said simply, “Fuck you. Strong letter to follow.”
“You said Charlie’s on his way up here now?” she asked.
“He’s probably still at the airport waiting for the flight. Those planes stop at every little whistle stop on the way. It could be dinner before he gets there.”
“My parents’ place is less than a kilometre from the Manomin Bay First Nation. I drive by OPP vans at the blockade every time I go into town. They’re parked at the side of the highway, monitoring the traffic.”
“I knew you were close; that’s why I called. Keep an eye on things, will you? There are a lot of politicians at Queens Park hoping like hell this doesn’t blow up.”
“Why the sudden interest?” Jones asked. “They didn’t care much about these victims before.”
Oh sure, she thought, the Ministry of Public Safety had created a cross-jurisdictional task force, but the Highway Strangler Task Force was grossly under-resourced. Charlie Pike didn’t even get all the case files he needed until a group of national Aboriginal organizations held a press conference accusing the task force of racism. First Nations were quickly discovering that reporters trumped lawyers and were a whole lot less expensive.
“Ah, Celia. I forgot to tell you. This victim is white.”
Oh crap, thought Jones, as she hung up the phone. It was going to be a political nightmare. If the Ontario government provided more investigative resources to the task force than it had in the past, First Nations would say it was because of the victim’s race. If it didn’t, the government would be criticized for being indifferent to a serial killer who targeted Aboriginal women. The Ministry of Public Safety wanted a scapegoat, not an investigator.
BFI, she thought, as she walked back to the living room to make sure her mother was all right. That’s what the RCMP used to call them whenever a call came in involving an Aboriginal person: Big Fucking Indian.
But the racial slur could just as easily be turned into Blame the Fucking Indian. And that would be Charlie Pike.
12
The air was already muggy outside as the morning sun began its slow creep over the ruins of Vedado. Inspector Ramirez passed a tractor-trailer hauling a container, with barred windows, stuffed full of tired passengers on their way to work.
He pulled his car in front of the three-storey stone building where Fernando Espinoza lived with his parents. He was careful to avoid parking too close to the sidewalk in case any chunks of stone fell from the crumbling exterior.
Espinoza bounded out the front door, oblivious to danger. Despite the time of day, he was as alert as a ground squirrel. Almost too chipper, thought Ramirez, stifling a yawn. There was a reason why ground squirrels were extinct on the island.
The young detective handed Ramirez a battered metal thermos as he climbed into the passenger side. “Hola, Inspector. Here, fresh coffee. My mother made enough for both of us.”
“That was kind of her.” Ramirez balanced the thermos on his knee as he pulled away from the curb. A yawn finally escaped him. “Thank her for me, will you?”
“She values our work. She says she feels safer at night knowing we’re here.”
“I wish she felt a little safer during the day. My wife finally ran out of patience with me working so many late hours. She took the children home to her parents.”
“She left you?” Espinoza sounded shocked.
“Only for a few days.” Ramirez said. “There’s a boys’ baseball tournament in Santa Clara. Edel is playing shortstop. They’ll be back on Monday, around dinnertime, if the trains run on time.”
All Cubans were entitled by law to one government-paid holiday. Since they couldn’t easily leave the country legally, that meant visiting another part of it. It was like getting new underwear, thought Ramirez, and discovering you had received your neighbour’s used ones.
“You never know,” said Espinoza. “Miracles can happen. At least you have a wife.” Espinoza was looking for one himself. “Sleeping in the same room as my mother and father doesn’t make romance easy, trust me.”
“It probably doesn’t do much for theirs either.” Ramirez chuckled. He turned the small car down Airport Road. Several new billboards had appeared overnight, including one that announced, TO DIE FOR MY COUNTRY IS TO LIVE! The dead woman shook her head in the side-view mirror as if to disagree.
President George Bush grinned maniacally on another poster. Trails of blood ran from the corners of his lips. EL ASESINO was the caption, the letter L formed by a black gun.
The angry words would never be seen by most Americans. It was illegal for americanos to travel to Cuba from the United States without a special licence. The war against capitalism had become a childish one, thought Ramirez.
“Don’t be too anxious, Fernando. You have to make sure you find the right person. You don’t want to take chances, believe me. Otherwise, you could end up living with someo
ne you don’t like. At least you get along well with your parents.”
Seventy percent of Cuban marriages ended in divorce, but half of all divorced couples were forced to live together anyway because of the housing shortages.
They drove past a camello. It was on its way in from the countryside, spewing clouds of black exhaust. The buses were made of old bus parts, wagons, and recycled train compartments welded together, the centre portion raised in a hump. They were hot and uncomfortable, and crammed with hundreds of passengers.
Ramirez looked in his side-view mirror at the dead woman. The glass was stained with rust, discoloured from salt air. His cracked rearview mirror had disappeared a week or two earlier, no doubt recycled by the same thief who had discovered that Ramirez’s car doors no longer locked. It was almost easier to travel to China than to find a replacement part for a Chinese car.
Degrees of impossibility, thought Ramirez. Like the dead woman sitting in the back seat, looking out the window, and the dead man he’d found in the washroom admiring himself. They were impossible too. And yet they seemed so real.
The dead woman tapped a cigarette on a gold-coloured compact and put it in her mouth. She opened the compact and rubbed her fingers in the pressed powder. When she noticed Ramirez watching, she turned her hand slowly from front to back, making sure he saw the chalky smudges on her fingertips. She snapped the compact shut and winked at him. She pointed to the interior light and shook her head, holding her index finger to her full red lips.
“I was at a concert last night at Revolution Square,” said Espinoza. “The statue of José Martí had a piece of grass stuck on its head like one of those bristle haircuts.”
“Really?” Ramirez chuckled. “Someone was brave. Or very drunk.” The statue was at least seventeen metres high, and the square was always packed with tourists.
“There are rumours that a famous graffiti artist has come to Havana for the hip-hop festival. His name is Banksy. That’s the kind of thing Banksy would do.”
Ramirez raised his eyebrows. “There are famous graffiti artists?”
“Celebrities all over the world collect his work, Inspector. Actors, like Brad Pitt. They pay millions of dollars for it. When he paints something on the side of a building, people will pull down the walls to get at it.”
“No need for that here,” said Ramirez, and snorted. “A little patience and they’ll come down all by themselves. What does he do that’s so special?”
“Well, for one thing, he gets his art into places that no one else can. He once spray-painted graffiti inside the Vatican—an image of the Pope being patted down by riot police. Even his private parts. The Pope’s, that is. And he went into the Louvre in broad daylight and hung up one of his own paintings. It was a conquistador being burned at the stake while a group of Indians watched.”
“So he’s a subversive,” Ramirez said. “Are the rumours true? That he’s in Havana?”
Espinoza shrugged. “There’s no way of knowing. No one knows his real name or what he looks like.”
They drove past the largest of the anti-Bush billboards. It towered over the exit leading to the Palacio de Convenciones. It was erected the previous year, in 2006, just before the convention centre hosted an international conference on terrorism that focused almost entirely on Castro’s obsession, Luis Posada Carriles. A simple mathematic formula linked the caricatures of the three men it vilified: “Bush + Hitler = Posada.”
The U.S. Special Interests Section had retaliated by putting up an electronic ticker tape that displayed continuous human rights messages. Over a hundred thousand pro-Castro demonstrators had been bused to the Plaza Anti-Imperialista at the end of January to protest, but the electronic ticker display continued. This week’s message attacked Fidel Castro’s dictatorship: “The people best suited to running the country are those driving taxis and cutting hair.”
Given the number of doctors, architects, and engineers driving cabs, Ramirez thought it was probably a fair comment.
13
The same youngster who stowed Charlie Pike’s baggage clambered into the pilot’s seat. It made Pike uncomfortable knowing that the tiny plane would be flown by someone not much older than his battered luggage. But he was uncomfortable flying at the best of times. His father’s clan—the Pikes—came from the water, not the air. Pike was Wolf Clan by his Mohawk mother. Wolves weren’t supposed to fly either.
Pike had forgotten just how small the northern bush planes were. When he sat down, the top of his head brushed the ceiling, and he wasn’t all that tall. He could see all the way through to the cockpit and out the front windshield to the overcast sky. There was no security door to separate the pilot and his co-pilot from the passengers. The co-pilot handed out packages of small white foam earplugs; once they got going, he explained, the engines would be noisy.
They’d land in White Harbour around six o’clock Eastern Standard Time, five o’clock in the north. But even gaining an hour, it would be dark in Manomin Bay when Pike got there, and there were no streetlights where he was going. White Harbour was at least a half hour from the airport, and the Manomin Bay First Nation was another half hour’s drive, forty-five minutes if the roads were bad.
As the small plane gained altitude, Pike looked out the narrow window beside his cramped seat. He watched a solitary Canada goose glide below them, its wings extended. It was a good thing it wasn’t flying in front of them, he thought. A goose could easily take down a plane this size. Caught in the engine, it could sink a jet. Pike wondered if the bird had lost its flock, if that was why it hadn’t migrated. He liked the fact that it was escorting them. The old man would consider that a good omen.
The old man wasn’t Pike’s real grandfather—Pike’s Ojibway grandfather was dead—but Pike called him mishomis as a term of respect. The old man was Ojibway too, and homeless. He was dying of hepatitis but refused to go to a shelter. Most often Pike found him wrapped in thick blankets near the police station, where he shot up in the mornings. The heroin helped him deal with the pain. Pike hoped he’d be all right while he was away. O’Malley had promised to look out for him.
It was the old man who told Pike that humans had descended from animals, that each clan was a link back to creation. He told Pike stories about Nanabush, the trickster—or, as he called him, Nanabozho—and others, like Muskrat and Crow. He exchanged stories and Anishnabe legends with Pike for coffee, a sandwich, a bowl of hot soup.
Pike pulled a beaded cuff from his pocket. It was a wide bracelet woven of black, white, yellow, and red beads.
“Keep this, son,” the old man said softly and pressed the bracelet into Pike’s hands. “It’s all I have left.”
“Miigwetch,” said Pike, accepting the gift and the responsibility that accompanied it, as the old man knew he would.
Before he left for the airport, he tracked the old man down and told him where he was going. The old man leaned back on the park bench and pulled his blankets around him. Pike knew he was tired, that even talking these days was an effort. His breath froze, suspended in the air.
“Your people are Ginoozheg. Fish Clan. Mine are Anaandeg, on my mother’s side. We have big families.” He laughed and patted Pike’s hand. “Go back to your people, that’s where you belong. Don’t worry about me. It’s not my time to cross the river.”
As Pike stood to leave, the old man reached out and gripped his hand. “Our people think Nanabozho is a trickster. They don’t like to talk about the bad things he did. Once, he tricked his daughters into marrying him. When people found out, he was so ashamed that he crawled into the mouth of a fish.” The old man looked at Pike, his face creased with concern. “Some people think Nanabozho is still hiding in the water.”
Charlie Pike balanced his file on his knees and reread the preliminary conclusions of the Highway Strangler Task Force. Formally, it was the Coordinated Joint Operations Task Force for Dead and Missing Aborig
inal Women.
O’Malley sometimes called it the Highway “Straggler” Task Force, because it got so little done. Pike winced when he overheard one of the other members joke it was too bad it wasn’t the Task Force for Dead Indian Madams, in which case they could call it TEDIUM. Pike didn’t find it funny, not the joke or the attitude behind it.
The task force’s mandate was to review cold files, closed files, and unsolved cases to see if there were links between the victims’ deaths. But so far they’d only managed to cobble together a report on four that looked related. Five, if the latest body fit the profile. There were too many different police forces involved to reach consensus on much of anything. Pike wondered how many victims there really were. Aboriginal women had been disappearing his entire life.
Part of the problem was that few police forces had initially responded seriously to complaints from worried families that their daughters, mothers, and sisters were missing.
“These women are transients,” one police spokesman said to the media. “Sex trade workers don’t stay in one place for long. They move away, change their names, cut their family ties. We don’t have any reason to think these women are dead. They’ll turn up.”
But most didn’t. There were over fifty posters of missing Aboriginal women on the bulletin board in the corridor of the Rideau Regional Police Force Homicide section, more than five hundred across all of Canada that Pike knew of.
Things changed in 2002, after pig farmer Willy Pickton was charged with killing twenty-six women in British Columbia, mostly prostitutes. He told an undercover officer that he’d planned to kill fifty but got caught at forty-nine.
As public outrage mounted, police forces finally started talking about coordinating their investigations. But it was difficult. Murderers didn’t stay within provincial boundaries; criminals roamed. In Ontario and Manitoba, the missing and murdered women not only fell under different jurisdictions, but in different sections of the various police forces involved. Pike found himself liaising with investigators in Unsolved Homicides, Criminal Investigations, Major Crimes, and Missing Persons, as well as with the OPP and RCMP.
