Hungry Ghosts

by Peggy Blair

  “It’s Inspector Ramirez, Dr. Yeung. I apologize for calling you so late.”

  “I was sent here to work, Inspector,” said Dr. Yeung. “I am only here for a few days.”

  “I was calling about the insects Dr. Apiro found in our victim’s remains. Do you know when your tests will be finished?”

  “I should have results tomorrow, yes. The body’s proximity to the airport has been helpful. Because daily temperatures are measured there, I can use meteorological data to calculate ambient temperatures.”

  “That’s excellent,” said Ramirez. “You know, Dr. Yeung, I don’t know anything about forensic entomology. Can you enlighten me?”

  “Don’t worry, Inspector,” Yeung said. “It is very reliable. It dates back to AD 1235 in China, when a farmer was hacked to death with a sickle. A lawyer named Sung Tz’u told the suspects to put all their farm tools in the sun. The one that attracted flies had blood residue on it. All our provinces and municipalities have committees of experts in entomology to assist the police in their investigations.”

  “How does it work?”

  “There are three stages of decomposition. The first is when eggs are laid and the body is colonized by sarcosaprophagous insects. These are called necrophages. Dr. Apiro found blowfly larvae in the remains as well as skin beetles, which show up in the second period. The third stage is skeletonization. There are very few insects in the third stage because there is nothing left for them to feed on.”

  Ramirez winced.

  “But in this case, decomposition was still active. The stages of colonization can be calculated quite precisely. I should be able to tell you when death occurred almost to the hour.”

  Ramirez could sense her excitement.

  “I will call you when the time gets closer,” Dr. Yeung said. “We can see the last stage together.”

  23

  Charlie Pike looked up and down the empty road. “When did the medical examiner and the technical team leave?”

  “Maybe an hour ago,” said Sheldon Waubasking. “They took the body into town. There’s a morgue at the new health clinic on Main Street. Well, I guess ‘new’ means around ten years old. Wasn’t built when you lived here.” He fell silent for a moment, embarrassed.

  “It’s okay, Sheldon. Things worked out fine.”

  Sheldon nodded. “I think they wanted to get out of here before the storm hits. Supposed to be a big one. That doctor, he said to tell you they don’t have a tent strong enough to handle that kind of load. Said he’ll meet up with you in town tomorrow at the autopsy.”

  “He say when that’s going to be?”

  “Tomorrow at two. Wanted to give you some time to get there, because of the snow.”

  Pike frowned. The last thing he needed was bad weather. It would take hours for the plows to clear the roads and the SUV wouldn’t drive well in drifts.

  “You been here all day?”

  “Day’s not over yet,” Sheldon said. “Since around eight thirty this morning, anyway.”

  Pike noticed that Sheldon wasn’t wearing a watch either. That was a long time to sit around waiting, but then Sheldon had always been patient. That was why he always “stood six” at break-and­-enters while Charlie went inside.

  “What time did Adam Neville get here?”

  “That’s the doctor? Around eleven, I guess. CBC News came on the radio just after he pulled in.” Sheldon anticipated Pike’s next question. “Pauley went running to get Bill as soon as he found her. Bill called me right away. Took me a few minutes to get dressed, get the truck warmed up.”

  “Why did he go looking for Bill?” asked Pike.

  “Pauley lives there,” Sheldon said. He looked at the ground, uneasy. “Ever since Molly went missing. Bill’s his uncle, remember? Molly’s brother.”

  Pike nodded. “So Bill’s the chief now, eh?”

  “Yeah.” Sheldon shifted from foot to foot, as uncomfortable, it seemed, as Pike was at the idea.

  “Did he come here to take a look too?”

  “No. Said he was going to phone the RCMP and Indian Affairs. He don’t even talk to Ontario anymore. Says they don’t have any business on our lands; all our treaties were with the Queen. He told me he’d let them send someone up as long as it wasn’t the OPP. Doesn’t want to screw up the APF funding negotiations by letting them think they can come into our territory whenever they like.”

  Indian politics. Pike shook his head. “Techs say if they’re coming back?”

  “No,” Sheldon said. “As far as I know, they’re headed for Winnipeg. Heard them complaining when they were packing up about getting paid.”

  Pike wondered why they’d left so quickly. Was the evidence Adam Neville found that strong? Or was it the fear of being caught in a storm? Maybe they were afraid of being alone in the woods on an Indian reserve in the dark. If so, he couldn’t blame them.

  “Well, I guess I better look around.” Pike walked the crime scene whenever he could. Not to get inside the killer’s head; he was better at getting inside the victim’s.

  “I got a couple of flashlights in the truck if you need them,” said Sheldon. “They ran some of that yellow tape in there, around the trees. Hard to see it now. Gets dark early these days.”

  “How far in the woods was she?” Pike asked.

  “Just enough to be out of sight. I put down some red pylons to show what I found after they left. Edawayi’ii.” On both sides.

  “The technicians missed something?” Pike was surprised. Neville and his team were usually pretty good.

  Sheldon shrugged. “There were some footprints on the road, in the crust. You could only see them after some of the snow blew away. I took measurements when it was still light out. In case the storm got here before you did.”

  “You didn’t tell them?”

  “They told me to stay out of the way, so I waited in the truck. I walked around a little after they left. Needed to stretch out my legs.”

  Pike shook his head. Sheldon Waubasking had been trained as a tracker by his mishomis. His grandfather had been one of the best hunters and trappers in the Manomin Bay First Nation traditional territory until he died from cancer. Besides, Sheldon had been charged enough times to know the rules of evidence inside out.

  Even so, Pike was impressed. This was textbook containment—

  pylons, measurements. He looked at the sky. He sniffed the crisp air, smelled the cold front moving in.

  They walked back to the truck. Sheldon pulled two heavy black flashlights out of the glove box and handed one to Pike.

  “Before we go in there, did the technicians take casts of your boots?” asked Pike. He hoped so. Otherwise, he’d have to keep his old friend well back from the yellow tape; he didn’t have anything with him to make casts.

  “You kidding? That guy Adam Neville, he even took my fingerprints,” Sheldon said. “I told him I didn’t go nowhere near that body. Said he needed them anyway. About the only thing he didn’t take was my blood.”

  “Wanted them for elimination, I guess,” Pike said. “Nothing personal.”

  Sheldon nodded. He’d been in and out of jail enough times that he didn’t need an explanation. “Who would have thought we’d end up on this side of the law, Charlie?”

  “I guess fate has a sense of humour.”

  “All right,” Pike said, looking at the dark sky, the heavy night clouds. He felt the weight of what Adam Neville was going to do to the woman’s body descend over him. His grandfather would have been horrified at the idea that a dead woman would be cut into pieces, her soul permanently severed from her bones.

  Wiyo was the Anishnabe word for the physical body. That was the part that slowly disappeared and returned to the earth. But atisken, the word for bones, meant “the souls.”

  Charlie Pike’s people on his father’s side were Ojibway, part of the Anishn
abe linguistic family. Ojibway were supposed to be buried intact, in the land where they’d been born, unless they were Hare Clan. Bones of the Hare Clan had to be burned and the ashes scattered so their souls could go back to the sky where they belonged. If these things weren’t done, the udjibbom, the second soul, would be lost, left to wander near the grave forever.

  It was why the women on the posters pleaded with him, Pike thought. They wanted him to find them and bury them properly.

  “Now, remember this, Charlie, animals are people too. And that goes for fish as well,” his grandfather had explained when Charlie was little, as they tugged their heavy nets into the boat. Dying fish flopped helplessly inside. “You have to bury their blood and guts on shore, away from the water. You always burn a little tobacco to thank them for giving up their lives so we can eat them. If you put fish blood in the water, the fish won’t come back, because you don’t respect them. It’s like the Hare Clan. If you bury someone from the Hare Clan in the ground, the snow comes to punish you.”

  Pike lifted his nose, smelled the punishment of snow. “We better get started, Sheldon,” he said, “before this storm buries all of us.”

  Sheldon Waubasking walked in front of the truck. He pointed to tire tread marks in the snow at the side of the road.

  “Biijidaabii’iwe, ezhhishin.” He drives here, leaves a mark. “See?” he said, taking a few steps and pointing. “There’s a woman’s footprint. She walked up to the driver’s door and then went into the woods.”

  Pike took a ruler out of his satchel as well as his camera. He bent down on one knee and set the camera flash. He put the ruler next to the shoe print and snapped a few shots.

  It was the best he could do. He had no sulfur prill to make a cast in the snow. Even if the techs agreed to come back, by the time they did, the shoe prints would be covered by drifting snow.

  They should have asked for Sheldon’s help, Pike thought. The tire marks were barely visible now, as the wind began to whip ice pellets across the road. He squatted to take a closer look.

  “They must have drove here in one vehicle,” said Sheldon. “There’s only one set of tracks on this side of the road. Tread’s not that deep. Could be all-season tires. You can see where they slipped sideways.”

  Only rental cars had all-season tires; everyone else used winters. Something nagged at Pike, something he should remember. “Looks like a pretty wide base. Truck or SUV? What do you think, Sheldon?”

  “The only people who come into the territory driving SUVs are lawyers. Well, except for you, I guess.” He smiled. “They rent them. You can’t tell much from the width. Frames are pretty much the same size. But most people up this way drive trucks.”

  Pike agreed. You could throw a moose or deer in the back of a truck during hunting season. Couldn’t do that with a car or an SUV, and not with a rental.

  “By the way, do cell phones work anywhere around here?” asked Pike. “I couldn’t get a signal at the airport.”

  “Depends where you are. Should work some of the time, anyway. Nearest tower is about fifty miles away. I have a BlackBerry if you need it. They work pretty good for emails.”

  Pike smiled. Manomin Bay might not have clean water, but it was the most connected hub in the world when it came to information sharing. What others called gossip.

  “She was iwidi,” said Sheldon, pointing. Over there.

  They walked into the woods until Pike saw the cordoned-off area. A stack of brush was piled beside a fairly deep trench in the ground.

  “I guess the killer put that over the body to hide it,” said Sheldon. “Pauley said he moved it so he could get a better look at her.”

  Pike frowned. The technicians should have taken all the branches with them to check for fibre, hair. Lots of things snagged on twigs. That’s how you tracked animals, looking for fur, not just their tracks. Depressions in the ground where they lay down. Moults.

  Pike pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his satchel. He handed a second pair to Sheldon. He stood back to see if anything caught his eye. He tried to imagine how the body had been posed, what it was like before the technicians carried it away.

  He looked out to the road. Sheldon was right; it would have been hard to see the body in the woods if you were driving by. The killer had dug a pretty deep hole in frozen ground. That took time.

  “I think maybe he used some of those branches to sweep away his footprints. Cut them down over there.” Sheldon motioned towards some pines.

  Pike shone the flashlight at them. A couple of wounded trees bled sap where their limbs had been cut. He bent over to examine the grave. The edges of the hole were straight, sloped inwards.

  “He stopped here for a smoke,” Sheldon said. “Nandokawe’.” While he looked for his tracks. “There’s a little pile of burned tobacco and paper. They missed that too.”

  Pike took a pair of metal tweezers from his satchel. He squatted down and carefully picked up the tobacco and the scorched piece of cigarette paper. He put them in a plastic exhibit bag, dated and initialled it, and put it in his satchel.

  The killer was relaxed enough to stop for a roll-your-own smoke, thought Pike. Maybe Sheldon was right. Maybe he was taking a break before he checked to make sure he didn’t leave any evidence behind. Pike’s mind flashed back to the cigarette butts at the other scenes, the loose tobacco at this one. Why the difference?

  Stupid, the techs not asking for Sheldon’s help. Sheldon had learned from his elders how to be quiet, how to move without making a sound. He knew how to disguise his smell, his presence, and then, when he was done, how to remove any trace that he’d been there.

  It wasn’t Sheldon’s fault that they’d been arrested. Pike hadn’t got out the window fast enough. Sheldon knew enough to back away, to not draw attention to himself. If O’Malley hadn’t been walking a beat with another cop that day, Sheldon would have got away clean.

  Pike looked at the grave carefully. That kind of planning was probably beyond an FAS kid. But it was pretty strange that in a forest filled with deadfall, Pauley had found the woman’s body that easily. If he hadn’t, she would have been buried in the storm, her body hidden until spring thaw.

  “People still trap in these woods?” Pike asked.

  “Just the old women. Nothing much in here these days except rabbits. Maybe a fox. Every now and then a big old black bear. We leave her alone, she leaves us alone.”

  “Find anything else, Sheldon?”

  “I think maybe something happened over here.” Sheldon pointed his flashlight beam at an area about six feet outside the yellow tape, where he’d set another red pylon.

  No wonder the technicians missed it, Pike thought, as he shone his flashlight on the ground. He stared at the small disturbance in the ice-crusted leaves, moved the snow and leaves out of the way with his pen. There was a small groove in the snow crust. A narrow indent, the shape of a wedge.

  “Not sure I would have caught that. Good eye.”

  Pike took more photographs, more measurements. He stood up, swept his flashlight back and forth across the ground. “Don’t see much else around here except some old bear scat.”

  “See what’s in it? Little bits of metal from those bells the white people wear to keep the bears away.” Sheldon laughed.

  “It’s like those warning signs on the highway for moose,” said Pike. “If they really want to keep moose off the road, they should put up a sign with a picture of a great big semi on it.”

  They both chuckled as they walked out of the forest. Sheldon picked up the red pylons along the way. He stopped to show Pike a series of small round impressions in the snow. They looked like someone had driven a tent peg into the ground repeatedly.

  “That guy, Neville, he took lots of pictures of these.”

  “There were marks like that at one of the other crime scenes too,” said Pike. “We think maybe they’re s
tiletto heels.”

  The heels were sharp enough to damage hardwood floors. They would leave an indentation even on frozen ground. But they weren’t the kind of shoes women would wear outside in the winter, not even a hooker.

  “Funny, I didn’t see any shoe prints around here from a man,” Pike said. The techs had been careful to map out a corridor around the evidence.

  “Snow must have covered them up. You call them shoe prints, eh?”

  “Footprints means bare feet in my line of work.”

  “Yeah? What if you’re wearing moccasins?”

  Pike smiled. A few snowflakes swirled in the air as the wind started to pick up. The storm was coming, no doubt about it.

  “You think the Highway Strangler killed her?” Sheldon asked.

  “Endogwen.” I’m not sure.

  Sheldon shrugged. “Awenen gaye?” Who else?

  Sheldon loaded the plastic pylons in the back of his truck. Pike wiped the snow off his latex gloves and pulled them off. He put them in his satchel along with the camera and the exhibits. He leaned against the truck and tried to imagine what happened.

  The woman, almost paralyzed with fear, stumbling into the woods on her impractical shoes. The killer probably walked behind, prodding her with something. What was he holding? A rifle? A knife? A gun?

  He had something that scared her enough so she’d do what he wanted instead of running away. But where could she run, in the deep snow, on an Indian reserve? It was only a short distance to the nearest house on the highway, but a white woman probably wouldn’t know that, unless she lived or worked nearby. Was she local? The two communities, First Nation and white, maintained an uneasy distance.

  “The victim, did Pauley recognize her?”

  Sheldon shook his head. “Said he never seen her before. And me, I never saw her face. They had her all zippered up in a black bag when they carried her out of there.”