The Calling

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  'My superior just asked me to come and ask a couple of questions.'

  'You came fifteen hundred kilometres to ask some questions about a sad old dead Indian, huh? You think he killed himself because someone drank Lysol out in M'njikaning last Christmas?' Wingate scuffed his feet. The man had his hands on his hips. 'We got a right to know what's going on in our own house, you know?'

  'I understand,' said Wingate.

  The man fell to silence, looking at Wingate without looking away. It seemed to him then that the best move might be just to head back to Red Lake and figure out another way to get the information they needed about Atlookan. A morgue photo would do if they could get their hands on one. The man interrupted his thoughts. 'Joe was my uncle on my mum's side,' he said. 'What do you know about him that I don't?'

  'I don't know anything,' said Wingate quickly. 'I honestly don't.'

  'But you think there's something on the other side of this river you should look at.'

  'I guess I do.' He offered his hand and the man took it. 'I'm Detective Constable James Wingate. I don't mean to give you the impression that I'm skulking around. And if you're his nephew, then maybe I should be talking to you anyway.'

  'I'm one of his nephews,' said the man. 'Joe had five brothers, four sisters, and nine kids of his own. There's no shortage of Atlookans on the reserve and every one of them knew him.'

  'He was sick,' said Wingate.

  'For years,' said the man. 'He had cancer. My uncle used to get up every hour all night to smoke. We figure he smoked two packs a day and the best part of a third when he should have been sleeping. But he made it to eighty-three. Then he'd had enough.'

  'Why do you think he'd had enough? Why did he kill himself now?'

  The man shrugged. 'He'd tried everything, I guess. Wife was dead, thought he was turning into a burden for his kids. He was in pain.'

  Wingate had taken out his notebook and shown it to the man, and the man had nodded. Wingate wrote down 'tried everything'. The man standing behind them whistled.

  'Ferry's coming. I'm going to get a cup of tea for the crossing. If you want, we can talk more on the boat. But I don't want to be snowed by any of your cover stories, officer. If I talk to you and it leads you somewhere, I want to know.'

  'Agreed,' said Wingate. 'I might not be able to tell you everything I know right away, but I'll try to keep my promise.' The man turned with his hands in his pockets and started back toward the terminal building. 'I didn't get your name,' said Wingate.

  'I'm Joe Atlookan,' said the man. 'And there's six more of me on the other side of the river.'

  By the time the boat left the dock, twenty-five more people had shown up. The ferry was so regular that there was no reason to get there early unless someone had dropped you off. It was a small vessel, with room for perhaps fifty. The reserve had all the services and amenities the community needed, including a school and a clinic, so the ferry wasn't used as a daily conveyance for more than a handful of people who worked off the reserve.

  Wingate was much more conscious of his conspicuous presence now than when only two people had been looking at him. Getting on, he'd proposed to Joe Atlookan that they talk in a more private setting once they'd got to the reserve, and Atlookan had nodded and left him sitting more or less alone at the back of the ferry.

  Halfway across the river, the other passengers began to lose interest in him, and Wingate allowed himself to raise his head and observe the people around him. He didn't know a lot of native people, and like a lot of city folk, his experience of natives was limited to poverty and addiction. There were community centres and native health centres in Toronto, and on occasion, he'd had a reason to go to them while on the job. But the atmosphere in these places was so sad that he'd found he couldn't look people in their eyes. He wondered if he'd feel the same ugly pity in Pikangikum as he did in Toronto. He'd soon find out.

  The reserve was a collection of about four hundred houses and some larger buildings, surrounded by trees. Joe Atlookan waited for him to get off the ferry and took him to his mother's house, a small wooden structure with a wood-burning stove in the middle of the main room. The small house was redolent of roasting meat. Wingate sat at the woman's kitchen table clutching the cup of tea she'd insisted he take when he came through the door. He listened to the son explain to the mother in Ojibway what Wingate presumed were the main points of the reason he'd come all this way. As she listened, she kept her eyes on Wingate, who felt compelled to sip the too-hot tea.

  When Joe was finished talking, his mother came and sat beside Wingate. 'Are you hungry?' she asked.

  'I'm okay, thank you.'

  Her son said a couple more phrases to her and she got up, opened the oven door and removed a roaster. She ladled out a couple of shallow dishes of stew and put them both on the table. 'My son says it's an hour out here from Red Lake, an hour's wait at the landing, and then forty minutes by ferry, so you must be hungry even though you say you are not. So first you eat.'

  'Your son has a talent for catching me in untruths.'

  She cast a look behind her as her son came to the table. 'He means he is a police officer and he is careful, Ma. He's fine.' Joe reached into a cloth-covered basket and took out a slice of white bread and passed a second one to Wingate. 'Her name's Mary,' he said. 'You catching on to the naming trend here? I got a mother and two aunts named Mary. My mum's the only one who kept it, the others went by their middle names. All four of my remaining uncles are called Joe something. They all go by the something. The man you came here to ask questions about, he was the last Joseph Atlookan of his generation.'

  Wingate turned to Mary, who stood in the middle of the kitchen folding and refolding a hand-cloth. 'Were you close with your brother?'

  'I was very close with him.'

  'Your son told me that he'd "tried" everything. To help with the cancer. What kinds of things did he do?'

  'Joseph tried any medicine he could get his hands on, but he put no faith in giving up his poison. A smoke in one hand, a pill in the other. There was no medicine could help my brother.'

  'So you think he just gave up?'

  'You want more stew?'

  Wingate looked into his plate and saw he'd wolfed down the portion she'd given him. He hadn't had a home-cooked meal in more than a month. 'It's absolutely incredible. What is it?'

  'Caribou,' she said. 'I have a freezerful of it.'

  'I'd love some more,' he said.

  She gave him another serving, and this time Joe Atlookan just passed him the bread basket with a half-smile. He slowly pulled away the cloth covering the bread for Wingate like he was drawing aside a curtain. He was looking Wingate in the eyes. 'I guess he gave up,' Mary Atlookan said. 'I don't know. They just came and took him away.'

  'Who did?'

  'Some men from the band council.'

  'There's nothing unusual about that,' said Joe.

  'Was anyone with him the day he died?'

  Mary considered the question for a moment. 'He lived alone. But he still has two daughters here in town. You could try one of them.'

  After the meal, Joe placed a phone call to one of his cousins. Fifteen minutes later, they were holding fresh cups of tea in an identical house on the other side of the reserve. Wingate wrote the woman's name in his pad: Wineva Atlookan, an unmarried daughter of the dead man. She was in her fifties. She'd been with her father the morning of his death. 'Did anyone visit him that day?' Wingate asked.

  'One of his doctors from over the river,' she answered.

  'One of his doctors?'

  Joe put his tea down with a dull clunk on the kitchen counter. 'My uncle was addicted to New Age crap as much as he was to his cigarettes. I think there was a new quack in town every three days.'

  'Did you meet this man?'

  Wineva shook her head. 'Not really. Dad said he was coming and he would not make medicine with him unless he was alone. So I waited until there was a knock at the door. Dad insisted I go out the back, but I caug
ht a glimpse of the guy.'

  Wingate turned to a new page. 'What can you tell me about him?'

  'He was thin as a rail,' said Wineva. 'He had on a long black coat with a cape that was tied around his throat. He might have been holding a hat. I didn't really see his face, though.'

  'Did you hear him say anything?'

  'Just "Hello Joseph", like he knew my dad from somewhere.'

  Wingate's hand was shaking. First contact, no matter how remote, was a huge step forward. Their man had just begun to emerge from the mist. 'Anything else? Rack your mind, Miss Atlookan, this could be important.'

  'Now there's something you're not telling me,' said Joe. 'What is it?'

  Wingate closed his notebook instinctively. 'I'll keep my promise,' he said. 'But I need you to trust me now.'

  'You think my uncle was murdered.'

  He looked back and forth between the dead man's two relatives. The danger of the truth was this: he could offer it as a sign of fellowship, but if word spread, it could scupper their advantage. 'I don't know what happened to him,' he said at last.

  'Do you think he was murdered?' repeated Joe Atlookan, holding Wingate's gaze. 'That's all I want to know.'

  'I think it's a possibility.'

  Wineva Atlookan stumbled back into one of the kitchen chairs and sat down. 'Why? Who would murder an old, dying man?'

  He pulled out the chair beside hers and took her hand in his. 'Do you think the men who came to take your father's body might have photographed the scene?'

  'And who cuts their own throat?' she said to herself.

  'Have you been back to your father's house?' said Wingate.

  She was still staring down at the tabletop, then she seemed to notice her hand in the officer's and she removed it. 'My father didn't pay this man, whoever he was,' she said. 'Not in cash. When we went back into the house, my father's Bible was gone. I didn't think anything of it – it's not uncommon here to barter for services. I thought to myself, he's given up. He paid for his last doctor with something he thought he wouldn't need any more. But now, if you say he was killed, did this man steal my father's Bible?' She stood, agitated. 'What kind of person is this? Who would come to our home and do such a thing?'

  Wingate watched her pacing the room, her hands suddenly alive. She shook them as if there were water on her fingers. She still had not answered his question about the photo, so he came at it from another angle. 'Miss Atlookan, I'm sorry I've upset you. Your father's death has been hard enough on you, but may I please ask you one more thing?'

  She stopped in the middle of the room, stranded in her worry and grief.

  'Did you see your father's body?' Wingate asked.

  'My God,' said Joe, 'is that really necessary to ask her?'

  'Of course I saw it. I found him.'

  He proceeded carefully. 'It must have been awful.'

  'It was awful. There was blood everywhere. On the walls. On the ceiling.'

  'I'm sorry you had to see that,' he said. 'It's not the kind of thing anyone who loves a person should ever see.' In the back of his mind, he wondered how many people's blood must have been dripping from the old man's ceiling. He watched some of the tension draining from her body. She would cry any moment now. He went to her. 'Wineva,' he said, 'if there's anything else you think I should know, please do tell me.'

  She shot a glance at her cousin and then brought her face back around to Wingate. 'He was singing,' she said in a low, dread-filled voice. 'There was no sound, but his lips ... he was singing when he died.'

  And then she shook as if she were freezing cold and burst into helpless tears.

  'He's posing as a healer!' he shouted over the sound of the rain. He was standing between the beds in the hotel back in Red Deer, the phone pressed to his cheek. 'He's somehow making contact with people who are terminally ill and then visiting them, perhaps with a promise of a cure. Then he's murdering them.'

  Hazel listened carefully on the other end of the line. She pictured her young detective jumping up and down in a hotel room. 'Are there any crimescene pictures?'

  'I still don't know. I couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone. But this is our guy for sure. He did his thing with the mouth – the victim's daughter showed me what it looked like.'

  'How?'

  'She drew a couple pictures for me in my notebook. The shape of her father's mouth. And she tried to draw her father's visitor, but she didn't see a face. Just drew a man in a black coat. She said her father was singing – his mouth was pursed like he was hooting or something, but obviously whatever he was doing, it fits the Belladonna's MO. And it supports your theory that he destroyed Michael Ulmer's mouth because he thought there was a possibility someone would link that killing to Delia Chandler's. So I agree with you. The mouths are the most important thing here.'

  'You have to get some pictures, James. Did you talk to the band police?'

  'I didn't. I got in through the back door, as it was. But the guy I met here, I think he might be willing to talk to the band detachment for me.'

  'Find out,' Hazel said. She finished writing her notes. 'Well, now here's our big question: how is he finding these people?'

  'Or how are they finding him?'

  She thought about it for a moment. 'That's good, James. They might be seeking him out. Let's put that into the mix when you return and we'll see what we come up with. Call your contact and find some pictures, then get back into your little airplane.'

  'It's coming down here in buckets, Inspector. And it's getting dark. It is dark.'

  'It's the rain, James. If your pilot says you can fly, then you're going to have to suck it up. We need you home and ready to go first thing tomorrow.'

  He hung up and sat on the bed. The rain was a grey curtain beyond the window; it came down with the kind of ferocity he associated with the countryside, as if the man-made obstacles in cities somehow broke up storms like this and reduced them to a simulacrum of bad weather. Here it was awesome; it felt as if the lightning could pierce the building and pick him out of his supposed safety.

  This thought led somewhere painful for him, and he pushed himself off the bed. There were many presumed sanctuaries in one's life, and none of them were completely impermeable. He'd learned this and he'd come to think that this lesson was one that delivered you into permanent adulthood. It could turn you cynical if you let it. He hadn't let it, this far.

  The phone rang again, and he ran his palm upward against his cheek and picked it up. It was Brenna, the fun-loving pilot. He braced himself for the news that the flight home was going to be an adventure. He was sure she was going to use that word. But she surprised him by telling him that not even sparrows could take off in this weather. They were grounded, and would he like to have dinner downstairs in an hour? He gratefully agreed, then called Port Dundas again to give them the bad news that he wouldn't be home on time after all.

  She was wearing a red dress. Why had she packed a red dress for what she surely presumed was going to be a single-day gig? She stood up when he came in and shook his hand. The waiter came by with two whiskey sours. 'Sorry,' she said. 'I decided the first round was on me, so I ordered something I like. You can pick next.'

  'That's great,' he said, holding his drink out to her. They clinked glasses smartly. 'To the weather.'

  'Absolutely!' she said. She threw most of the drink back without grimacing.

  They ordered hamburgers with cheddar and bacon and had seconds of whiskey sours, and James felt pleased to have landed here, with this woman who turned out to be better company on the ground than in the air. She was a merry creature, twice divorced, the last time, he learned, from a man who couldn't take all her energy, as she put it. 'I'm a handful,' she said, spearing a french fry from his plate. 'You have to keep up with me.'

  'I can see that,' he said. She held her empty glass up to the waiter. Wingate tried to refuse a third drink.

  'You're not on duty, Noah's building another ark, and it's rude to let a woman drink alone.
So you'll have that third sour, young man.'

  'Can I have a beer?' he said, laughing.

  'Oh, would you like a light beer, you boy scout? You're a frigging policeman, James! Now stop wriggling, or I'll order you a double.'

  She told him about the little town she lived in now – it wasn't all that far from Port Dundas. Apparently, the age of the average citizen was 108. She was the company's only female pilot and, as she put it, the only upward mobility possible was on takeoff. Otherwise, she was stuck. 'It's a good job,' she said, 'although I've always dreamed of flying jets. But listen to me, yammering. You must have had an interesting day.'

  He tried to negotiate her interest wisely; he already knew she wasn't the kind of person to be put off with vagueness. He made up something one-quarter true and she did some nodding, pushing the ice around in her drink with her forefinger. Then, when he was in the middle of connecting the true detail about the caribou stew with something he made up about looking to recruit a new officer for M'njikaning, she interrupted him and said, 'Whaddya say we continue this conversation somewhere else?'

  He smiled at her, then the smile went away, and then he tried to put it back on and failed. He centred his water glass at the top of his plate.

  'Come on now,' she said. 'Don't go all Opie on me, officer.'

  'I'm sorry, Brenna, I can't.'

  'You're off-duty, aren't you?'

  'I am,' he said.

  'So you can't, or you don't want to?'

  'If I could, I'd be honoured. But I can't.'

  She considered him for a moment with the knowing look of an experienced dater. 'That can only mean one of two things, Detective. Either you're married or you're gay. Or both. Both is a possibility.' She watched him carefully for a reaction. He said nothing. Her eyebrows went up. 'Not both,' she said. 'And not married.'

  'I'm sorry,' he said.

  'So ... you're invited to dinner in the middle of nowhere by a fairly attractive woman who shows up in a red dress. What about that is unclear to you? You don't have three whiskey sours with me and a meal and then announce you don't play on my team. You walk in, see the girl in the red dress and you say, "I hear the banquet burgers here are great and by the way, I don't sleep with women".'