Hungry Ghosts

by Peggy Blair

  “Not as far as we know,” said Ramirez.

  Flores nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve been reading the most recent studies by the American FBI on serial killers. The yumas have so many that they’ve produced quite a comprehensive review. Although, in fairness, the Russians had Pichushkin and Chikatilo, and Colombia is still dealing with La Bestia. But those were men of low intelligence. What I see in these”—he tapped the photographs again—“is the stamp of someone organized. Although there are aspects of the murders that are disorganized too.”

  “What’s the difference between an organized killer and a disorganized one?” asked Espinoza.

  “The organized killer is intelligent,” said Flores, looking up. “He prepares carefully, sometimes for months. The thrill for him is the planning, not the execution.” He chuckled. “No pun intended. This man is socially competent. High-functioning. He’s a perfectionist, constantly finessing his craft. If you find him, Ramirez, try appealing to his ego. He may boast about his crimes.”

  “And what about the disorganized killer?” asked Espinoza. He held his pen expectantly.

  The young detective seemed fascinated with every statement that left Flores’s mouth, as if one of the marble statutes in the Plaza Vieja had suddenly started speaking. Whenever the profiler spoke, Espinoza scrambled through the pages of his notebook, writing furiously.

  “He’s opportunistic. He takes his victims where he finds them. The disorganized killer often keeps souvenirs, even though this puts him at risk of being caught. Huang Yong in China kept his victim’s belts, for example. The organized killer is too smart for that. He takes pleasure from planning; the disorganized one from remembering. This one may be a mixture of both. He’s taken his victims to areas he can’t completely control. The organized killer would never take that chance. He would use an abandoned building as his killing ground. There are certainly enough of them around.”

  “I’m confused, Dr. Flores,” said Espinoza. “If he’s so smart, why do you think he might boast about his actions?”

  “He doesn’t see what he does as a crime,” Flores explained. “He believes his acts serve a social purpose. Huang Yong was similar. He argued he was doing China a service by removing males from the population. He considered it more heroic than killing women.”

  “That’s just fucked up,” Espinoza blurted out. He blushed.

  “He’s bold,” said Ramirez. “But that’s part of it, isn’t it?”

  Flores nodded enthusiastically, a teacher admiring his student’s intuitive grasp of a difficult subject. “A man like this thrives on adrenaline. He may need more stimulation as time goes on. He’ll take more risks. I think he wants the bodies found before too much time passes, so that others can admire his craft.”

  “According to Dr. Apiro, Prima Verrier’s body was there for a while,” said Espinoza. “That doesn’t seem to fit the profile of someone who wants his victims found quickly.”

  “Perhaps the killer hasn’t read the most recent studies,” said Ramirez.

  Flores smiled. “If he’s a hybrid, he’ll be unpredictable. You know what to expect with an organized murderer. The disorganized killer will alter his approach if the right opportunity presents itself.”

  “Are you sure the second one isn’t a copycat?” asked Espinoza.

  “It can’t be, Fernando,” said Ramirez. “Granma never reports murders. Only the murderer could have known about the stocking tied around Prima Verrier’s neck.”

  “Except for those of you involved in the investigation,” said Flores. “I wouldn’t rule out someone in law enforcement.”

  “We can’t rule out anyone,” Ramirez agreed. “But we kept the police and the guarapitos well back.”

  The guarapitos were a level below patrulleros. They wore green uniforms instead of blue. They dealt with traffic mostly. When Prima Verrier’s body was discovered, they were put to work rerouting buses and taxis away from the crime scene.

  “I hate to say this, Ramirez,” said the profiler, “but it would be helpful if we had a third victim so that we could establish a pattern. If I’m right, we won’t have long to wait.”

  “You think he’ll do it again?” said Ramirez.

  The older man nodded. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Why does he do it at all, Dr. Flores?” asked Espinoza.

  “Why does a dog lick his balls?” The profiler smiled. “For the same reason men climb mountains. Because they can.”

  26

  After a restless sleep, Charlie Pike finally pulled himself out of bed, showered, and dressed. He took a seat on one of the vinyl banquettes next to the window in the motel’s restaurant and waited for the waitress to take his order. According to the people eating breakfast at the next table, almost thirty centimetres of snow had fallen overnight.

  Pike scanned the local paper’s headlines. They were a day old because of the storm. “Mohawk Warriors Join the Lines: Mayor Calls for Federal Government to Get Involved.”

  He’ll be calling that number for a long time, thought Pike. He looked carefully at the photographs of the protestors and the OPP officers, but he didn’t see anyone he knew from either side of the conflict.

  Outside, all the police SUVs and vans were gone. Pike ordered kolbassa sausage, eggs over easy, and brown toast. The waitress refilled his coffee cup.

  After he finished breakfast, he went back to his room and retrieved his satchel before walking out to the parking lot. The snow was up to the wheel wells on one side of the SUV; on the other, the car was almost buried in a drift. He brushed off the windshield with his sleeve, scraped the ice off the door handles, and opened the back door. He reached inside for the plastic brush and scraper.

  Once he’d cleared away the worst of it, Pike climbed in. He let the SUV idle, giving the heaters time to take the frost off the windows, then blew on his fingers to warm them up. He looked at the clock on the dashboard beside the radio. It was just after eleven. Three hours until the autopsy.

  He sat for a moment, thinking how to best use his limited time.

  Pauley Oshig, he decided. He pulled the SUV out of the lot, rocking it across the snow ridges left by the plow, and headed to the Manomin Bay First Nation. He was behind a salt truck most of the way. The salt pinged off the rental car like hailstones.

  The gravel road into the reserve had been plowed. Pike slowed down to avoid striking two stray dogs that were wandering along the shoulder, but they stayed clear of his car. One lifted its head when Pike drove by, its yellow eyes meeting his, curious. Great, thought Pike. He probably saw the killer driving on this road too, but he can’t tell me what he saw.

  The parking lot beside the Manomin Bay First Nation Band Administration building was jammed full with trucks. The clouds had parted, leaving a glimpse of indigo sky.

  Pike stepped out of the SUV. He didn’t bother locking the doors. No one locked doors on the reserve. No one had anything worth stealing. Besides, if someone needed something, they helped themselves and returned it or replaced it later.

  Pike thought it was funny that it was only off-reserve, where doors were locked, that people stole from each other. He’d first learned to steal in the Catholic day school. He started off small, taking food.

  He walked up to the wooden building. It looked new, with sharp rooflines. The front of the building was angled towards the bay.

  He steeled himself and pulled open the wide glass door, wiping his feet on the bristled mat. He didn’t recognize the young woman sitting behind the reception desk. She was probably a toddler when Charlie Pike’s mother and brother were thrown off the reserve by Chesley Wabigoon, Billy’s dad.

  Chief Wabigoon was on the phone, she explained, when he told her he was here to see Bill. “He’s speaking to the media about the blockade. I’ll let him know you’re here. He’ll be with you right away. Can I get you a coffee?”

  “Miigwetch
.”

  A few minutes later she brought him the coffee in a paper cup. “Don’t worry,” she said. “The water’s bottled.”

  Pike settled in for a long wait. Nothing happened quickly in Indian country. Whatever you were doing at the moment was the priority until the next crisis came up. That’s how things were. Pike was fine with it. He worked the same way.

  After a half hour or so, he stood up and stretched. He read the notices on the band council bulletin board. Rummage Sale. “Get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring Your Husbands!” “Electric girdles needed for the pancake breakfast March 6!”

  A few minutes later, Bill Wabigoon stepped into the reception area.

  “Anii, Charlie,” he said, smiling. “Geez, it’s good to see you. Come on in.”

  Pike followed the chief down the hall to his office. “Anii, Bill. Wanted to let you know I was in the territory.”

  It was protocol for anyone who lived off-reserve to stop by the band office, let the chief and council know they were in the territory. Had been like that all the way back to the 1700s, maybe even before. That’s when the Ojibway tribes at war with the Mohawks and the other Haudenosaunee nations met with the French Governor de Callières in Montreal and agreed to turn over the war kettle. “The Dish with One Spoon,” they all called it. Both Pike’s Ojibway and Mohawk relatives recited it as law, and it was a ritual every First Nation person knew to follow.

  If the Ojibway and Mohawks hadn’t reached that agreement, Pike doubted he’d even exist. His mother’s and father’s nations had been determined to wipe each other out in the wars over who would supply the Europeans with beaver pelts. But the chiefs and principal men made a verbal treaty with the French and each other, and they kept their word despite the centuries that passed. They couldn’t write back then, but they could remember.

  Bill Wabigoon’s office was bright with a glorious view of Manomin Bay. An elaborately beaded eagle feather rested high on a shelf alongside First Nation carvings and quill boxes. “You have to keep an eagle feather off the ground,” Pike remembered his mishomis saying. “Never let it touch the dirt.” The feather shared space with carved butternut birds from Georgian Bay, a tamarack twig goose from James Bay, a woven ash splint basket. On the walls, prints by Norval Morriseau, Daphne Odjig, Roy Henry Vickers.

  “Nice office, Bill.”

  “Miigwetch. Sit down, sit down. Geez, you look good, Charlie. Man, it’s been a long time, eh? Too bad it took a murder to bring you here. You think it’s that guy, that Highway Strangler? So you think he used an axe, eh? Maybe he’s ateshkodawewinini.” A fireman. “Or could be an ice fisherman, I guess. Doesn’t narrow it down too much, eh? Almost everyone around here is a volunteer fireman. And probably every man around here ice-fishes. Women too.”

  Pike smiled. Sheldon’s BlackBerry had been busy. “I can’t really talk to you too much about the investigation, Bill. Not until I know more.”

  Wabigoon shook his head. “Those girls, hitchhiking. No choice, eh? The buses don’t run up north anymore. You hear that old joke about the Anishnabe woman hitchhiking? She gets into a truck and there’s a big bottle of booze in the passenger seat. ‘Got that for my old man,’ the driver says. And the Anishnabe woman says, ‘Yeah? Good trade.’ ”

  Pike laughed. He’d forgotten how funny Bill Wabigoon could be. But that was how Billy recruited gang members. Made them laugh, made them feel good. Made each of them feel like he was the only person in the world Billy was interested in. Until they were hooked on drugs, booze, violence, and his approval. Then he moved on to someone else.

  “I need to talk to Pauley Oshig. I hear he’s living at your place.”

  “Yeah, ever since Molly . . .” Wabigoon didn’t finish his sentence. There was no need. He ran his hands through his hair. It had touches of grey in it. He was only four years older than Pike but looked like he had a decade on him.

  “Freda kept Pauley home from school today in case you wanted to see him. He’s not like other boys, eh? He has a hard time concentrating. Doctor said his brain didn’t develop right. It’s like he started drinking before he was born. Most of the time he’s okay, but sometimes he hits himself. Makes it hard for Freda to look after him. He has lots of problems at school.”

  Freda Nadjiwon. A second, maybe third, cousin of Bill’s. “The priests said it was okay to marry our cousins,” Pike’s nokomis—his Ojibway grandmother—had told him. “Before that, we never married our own family. The elders always picked out who married who. They knew who was related. But they lost the old ways because of those residential schools.”

  Pike pulled his thoughts back to the investigation. “Did you keep Pauley home yesterday too?”

  “Yeah, I told him to come straight here after he showed Sheldon where the body was. I wanted to keep an eye on him. Found out he’s been skipping school for months. I let him play computer for a while, then I sent him home for lunch.”

  “Okay if I go over to your place to talk to him?”

  “Sure. But I can’t go with you. I have a band council meeting that’s already late getting started, and it’s going to run late too. There’s so much going on up here now, Charlie. Our new water treatment plant isn’t finished. Indian Affairs, they send in truckloads of bottled water, but the shipment couldn’t get through this week because of the storm. Our land claims are going nowhere fast. And then there’s the blockade. Sometimes I feel like I’m one broken-down truck and a dead dog away from being a country-and-western song.” Wabigoon chuckled. “Yeah, go on over. Freda’s at home. We live in my dad’s old place. You know Chesley passed away, eh? Cancer took him. You probably haven’t had any lunch yet. Tell her I said to set you a plate.”

  “Miigwetch.” Pike remembered he had an autopsy to go to. He hoped he’d be able to keep down whatever he ate.

  “We should get together when you have more time, Charlie. We have lots to catch up on, you and me. We lost three elders this winter. A baby too, from that bird flu. And we had a couple of suicides. Two young kids.” Wabigoon shook his head. “Sometimes I think the government’s just waiting us out. You know what our land claims researcher found out? Ontario gets our land back if we go extinct. It’s in the agreement they signed with Canada when they set aside our reserves. Can you believe that? Extinct. That was the word they used too.” Wabigoon sighed. “You been out to see your auntie yet? I’m sure she knows you’re around.”

  “Not yet,” said Pike. He had hoped to get away without seeing anyone, but that wasn’t going to be possible. Everyone would know he was back. Gossip passed for recreation in Manomin Bay.

  Wabigoon frowned. “She lives in the elders’ lodge. We built it a few years ago. Got a half million from the feds, paid for the rest from our share of casino proceeds from Rama. We have a nurse who makes sure they take their medication. And there’s a traditional healer comes by too. She’s doing pretty well, for a woman her age, your auntie. You know she’s in a wheelchair now, eh? Diabetes took one of her legs but her eyes are still good.”

  “I’ll get over to see her later.” Pike shifted in his seat. He hadn’t known about the diabetes. He hadn’t kept in touch with anyone. “I need to do some door-knocking while I’m here, Bill. Ask some questions. Hope that’s all right.”

  “Yeah, sure, go ahead, Charlie. But most people won’t want to talk to you. They don’t like police coming here from outside. Me and a bunch of chiefs are hoping to set up our own police force, if the APF funding don’t work out. Maybe even if it does. Exercise our inherent right to self-government. Maybe I can talk to you sometime, pick your brain. We need people who know what they’re doing.”

  “Miigwetch, Bill. Sure, I’ll see you before I head back.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “There was a vehicle parked on the road right beside where the body was found. I need to find out if anyone saw it. I also need to find out when th
e snow stopped falling yesterday so I can figure out the timeline. I’ve been meaning to call the airport but my cell phone isn’t always working up here.”

  “No one’s there until just before a flight comes in anyway. Should open up around four, four thirty.” Wabigoon thought for a moment. “I can find out for you now, though.” He picked up a phone and dialed a number. He spoke in Ojibway to someone, asked when they started work. He thanked the person and hung up.

  “Patrick Akiwenzie drives our snow plow. Says he started clearing the roads just after four on Thursday. Nothing much moving before then except snowmobiles. He doesn’t plow till the snow stops. There’s no point; he’d just have to do it again, and we don’t have a big budget for snow-clearing. You’d be surprised what our education budget ends up paying for—snow removal as well as land claims. If we could get our lawyers to pick up a snow shovel, we could save ourselves a whole lot of money.”

  “Four in the afternoon?”

  Wabigoon nodded.

  “When did you find out about the body, Bill?” Pike pulled out his notebook, leaned it on his crossed knee, rooted around in his pocket for his pen. It was more for show than anything else. He almost never took notes.

  “Yesterday morning. Pauley was supposed to be on the 8:00 a.m. school bus but he ran home to tell me what he found.”

  “What time did he leave for school?”

  “About thirty minutes before that, I guess. Bus stops on the corner, where the gravel road meets the highway. Boy doesn’t wear a watch. He can’t make out numbers too good. I don’t own one either. Because it don’t matter what time it is, I’m always late.”

  “Know what you mean,” said Pike. He hadn’t worn a watch in years either.

  If it was 4:00 p.m. when the snow stopped falling, he thought, then the woman had to have been killed after that or her body would have been buried in the snow. It was 7:30, maybe 8:00 a.m. the next day when Pauley Oshig found her. That was a reasonable window of time to investigate—around sixteen hours.