by Lou Allin
“She’s sticking to her story. I’m trying to keep busy and not think about it. Meanwhile Mom is praying every waking moment and goes to pieces if I don’t eat enough at dinner. Dad, well, he’s just Dad. My rock.”
She tried to keep him talking. “So what about these cold cases you’re working?”
“Something has turned up. I also have access to national databases, so I can trace crimes with the same elements. Guess what?”
That sounded promising. What was the most distinctive feature in their current crime wave? “The garrotte?”
“Manitoba had two cold cases using wire. Or rather what they suspect was trimmer line. Was I right or was I right? Both girls were in their twenties. Caught alone walking at night.”
“What’s the description of the guy?” At least he sounded upbeat. With his usual sunny disposition, it would take the burden of Atlas to keep him down for long.
“That’s the problem. One girl suffered brain damage and still is in a coma. It’s less than fifty-fifty that she’ll come out of it. The other was found dead. She was raped, too, like the first one. No semen. No trace. A total strikeout.”
“He must be one cool and careful character.” The images chilled her. Holly felt a quickening at her pulse. “Where was this? And when?”
“Just outside Winnipeg. Selkirk and Portage La Prairie.”
She tossed her geography dice. “Smallish towns but not villages. Driving distance from the big city. Perfect trolling spots.”
“One was about five years ago, the other four. Nothing since then, as far as we know, but sometimes killers find a hiding place in the bush for their victims that is never discovered. Remember Clifford Olsen.”
Canada’s most notorious child killer and a B.C. resident. He had blackmailed the government into giving his family $100,000 in return for divulging the location of several victims’ remains. A devil’s bargain. He’d died in prison, but that was little consolation for the grieving families.
“Holly?”
“I wish I could do something to help you, Chipper, but …” She felt so helpless. How could she keep up his spirits? Ann was much better at this.
“How’s everything at the detachment?”
“So far all we’re doing is mop up after the rookie. She’s a total disaster. I can’t wait for you to get back.” Recently Ashley had improved, but no need to tell him that.
She thought she heard a swallow over the line.
“Me too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
First at the office that morning, Holly found a message to call Ed. What a super guy he was to keep her posted. Was it the paper analysis? She double-pumped her arm. “Yessss.”
“Results are in. It’s a puzzler,” he said.
“I know it was small. What kind of paper was it? Could they tell that much?” What she found in that yurt might have nothing to do with the case. A dozen people could have been in there in the weeks before the assault.
An amused laugh came over the line, and her expectations sank. Was Ed making fun of her? He’d seemed like a regular guy. Certainly not one of the mossbacks who patronized women.
She let silence be her ally. No use sounding like an eager teenager. When still he said nothing, she gave in. “I’m still here, Ed.”
“They ID’d it all right. It’s a tiny piece of cigarette filter paper, type unknown. Might be found anywhere. Floats on the breeze if you get my drift.” He didn’t laugh.
“Okay. Sure. At least we know what it is. But now …” Had she expected a miraculous breakthrough?
“Come on, corporal. You don’t think we’re going to be able to go anywhere with this, do you? In a public park? I went along because the two cases seemed to connect, and of course because we had a murder.”
Protesting would only make her look foolish. “Guess not. I owe you one for trying, though.”
“At the risk of my reputation, I took you seriously enough to do DNA on it, just in case. After all, a cigarette comes in contact with saliva,” he said. “The fragment was pretty degraded. No telling how long it had been out there. That part of the test will take longer.”
“What, like months?” Surely advances had been made, the rapid-fire television tests aside. A pop can had provided evidence when a criminal tossed it where his observers could find it. Similar busts had been made by cops waiting patiently for someone on a street corner to butt out a cigarette and leave.
“A few more days. Boone pulled a few strings for you.”
“What about Ellen’s case? She gave us everything but the kitchen sink.” She hoped the girl was moving on with her life.
He gave a frustrated sigh. “She did, and your report was very helpful. Points to you on that score. By the time she got to the next interview, she was pretty tired and disinclined to go into more detail. We ran the description every which way but loose. VICAP in the States and CPIC here. Nothing. Either he’s never been in trouble or that he’s never been caught. If we had a vehicle we could match him to, we’d have a better lead. There are too many reddish Hondas around. She didn’t know the exact year either. The morning it all went down we told the ferries and the airport to be on the lookout, but we can’t keep that up. We’d need a hundred men on each ferry from seven a.m. to nine p.m. Vancouver, Seattle, Port Angeles, or Anacortes. He might be creative and take the boat from Nanaimo to Vancouver.”
“I don’t know. If it’s the same person in all three cases, he seems to want to stick around. That might indicate that he has a job or a family. It’s not impossible that he’s married. Even with children,” she said. “Were there any forensics from the rape itself? Ellen went through hell. I can find out through Boone’s channels, but I’d rather hear it from the lead detective.”
“Flatterer. We figure he used a condom. Any trace on her went back to her boyfriend and contact they had the night before. He was very cooperative. Seemed like a solid guy. Stayed at the hospital the whole time until we cut them loose around midnight.”
“Damn. Poor kid. After all she went through. It’s discouraging.”
He chuckled. “Are you sure you want to run with the big dogs? Because you’re going to have to have a tougher skin than this. Face it. Cases don’t always get solved. Not in month, years, or decades. Some bodies are never found. That would be far worse, don’t you think?”
“I know all about that. But listen. My constable …” She told him about what Chipper had found out in Manitoba.
After a few days of phone tag, Holly called Terry again. When on the tenth time his answering machine didn’t pick up, she yelped for success.
“Welcome home, Island Girl. Aunt Stella told me you were living with your dad now just before I left for my holidays. I couldn’t believe it. You never came down when you were in Port McNeil, but Fossil Bay? That’s hardly an hour. I won a derby with a monster hali there a few years ago.”
“Still the same shy and modest guy I remember.” Everyone knew that, contrary to the strong and silent aboriginal stereotype, Terry never shut up, and he loved to talk with his hands. Some of the family teased him about having an Italian merchant hidden in the genetic woodpile.
“So when are we getting together? And don’t tell me that you married some lucky guy because you’re much too choosy. How’s your dad, anyway? I only met him once, but he seemed like a nice guy. Too bad the family …” He trailed off rather than remind them of the fact that Bonnie’s disappearance had strained relations with the family. They had broken contact a few months after it became apparent that Bonnie was not going to be found. Some were suspicious of Norman’s status as an outsider. That rift made Holly’s overtures to the Salish side of her past slightly tricky. She felt a greater loyalty to her father.
Talking to Terry made her nostalgic for those old times when her mother had taken her up to Cowichan to meet her relatives, historically known as “The People Who Fell From the Sky.” The mythic stories fascinated her, and she even learned a few words in the language, a minefield o
f glottal consonants.
When they’d finally settled on a time and place, she said, “I’ll be there Saturday morning. About noon?”
While she was in relative mode, she called Great Aunt Stella Rice up island. She’d tried to reach her several times to see if the wise elder had any information on Ashley’s brief time at the Cowichan detachment. For all she knew, Ashley might become a permanent fixture at Fossil Bay. This time, the elderly Coastal Salish princess picked up the phone
“You are coming up here again soon,” she said, almost as a demand. “And you have more information about your mother? You made me a promise.”
Holly chafed under the strict vow she’d made. There was no sense in giving her false hope, but she told her about the tote.
The old lady was a long time in responding. Knitting needles were clicking, a habit that indicated that she was thinking. Stella’s art had provided sweaters, hats, scarves, and mittens over the decades. Now she had Puq, a little wool dog to provide some of the material.
“That makes no sense at all. She was at my house the day before she disappeared. Her destination was Tahsis, not the States.”
“I may be able to pinpoint when it was left on the ferry. Maybe someone else found it up island and then went back over the border.” She paused.
“Raven the trickster, I suppose. This does not make sense to me.”
Stella’s usual enigmatic expression. Did she mean misdirection?
“I called you for another reason.” She explained about Ashley, couching the language in positive terms so as not to predispose Stella. Cowichan was a very small community with a reserve, and the RCMP officers were well-known and generally respected from what she knew.
“I remember that one. She gave a talk to our high-school students about the dangers of dropping out of school. It seems that her own sister ended up in, what do you call it, the sex-trade business?”
This was news. “Really?”
“The girl died from a drug overdose in Toronto. Constable Packke’s message to the young people was to get an education. It was a harsh talk, but we understood why. She stayed for another two hours taking questions from a group of girls. I was very impressed with her. That takes courage.”
Holly was beginning to put things together about Ashley. A law-enforcement father to impress, a sister to mourn, and a message. That might explain why she was rough on the hooker. Had the woman been procuring young girls? And the officer whom she accused of making advances? It wouldn’t be the first time that a “pillar” of the community had something on the side. Ashley had made a mistake with Trey. Since then, things had gone smoothly. Not that Holly didn’t want Chipper back yesterday.
Saturday, Holly navigated the cozy tourist and retirement town of Sidney by the Sea, located near the Swartz Bay ferry to Vancouver and the international airport, with matching real estate prices. A plane zooming over her car made her duck as she turned off the Pat Bay Highway. Was that a moustache on the pilot? How could anyone live near such noise? And the new runways that planned to accommodate more international flights would increase the traffic.
On the radio, Lady Antebellum was singing, “I Need You Now” when Holly pulled into Second Avenue and parked in front of a neat renovated cottage, circa the First World War. Its front porch had been enclosed to provide extra living space. There were no sidewalks, and on a grassy strip in front of a picket fence, a huge stump had been carved into a mask like the Easter Island statues.
Inside the fence, a perennial garden splashed rainbow colours from late-flowering yellow and purple mums. Flowers grew year-round on the temperate lower island. A lemon tree, carefully guarded, was Terry’s prize. Ceramic sculptures of frogs and turtles anchored nooks of interest. Following the flagstone path, she made her way to the stained-glassed front door and pulled a bell string with a brass wolf on the end. Very artsy. Terry’s wife, no doubt the gardener-cum-landscape architect, taught at Camosun College and exhibited her sculpture and carvings at local fairs. Most of them featured Coastal Salish animal images and mythic themes.
A young woman her own age dressed in a long red-print cotton skirt and white linen blouse answered the door. Silver Thunderbird earrings decorated her ears. “Holly? Terry has told me so much about his favourite cousin. Welcome to our home.”
Ricki gave her a warm handshake and invited her in. Like her husband, she had the light copper complexion and sleek ebony hair of her people. She bore a resemblance to Bonnie Martin in the seventies. In the foyer was a bright moon mask in the style of another relative from Holly’s childhood, Silas Seaweed. She tried to remember Terry’s totem. A bear? Certainly not a deer like hers. Try though she may, she couldn’t shake the idea that the diminutive ungulate was wimpy. But as her mother said, it had chosen her and she needed to work with it. No do-overs. All animals had their strengths and weaknesses.
“Chef Terry’s in the back getting charcoal ready. Please share our meal. And you must meet Piper. You will be her auntie.”
“I’m honoured.” To refuse the hospitality would shame the family. Here was her cousin married and with a child. Was that option in her future? Too soon to say, biological clock or not. She heard no ticking, but was it a wilful deafness? By her age, her parents had been married and with a toddler. She felt childish herself still living at home, but there was not the same quest for independence in a close-knit society like this.
With an overstuffed sofa and chairs, the living room was full of books, art, and kids’ toys, judging from the nature, between five and ten years. “Piper’s a very cute name.” Niece or a nephew? Hard to tell. She wasn’t one for holiday cards other than Stella. Catching up would be important. Being an only child gave her some isolation, and she didn’t regret the status, but wondered at the alternative. Suppose your siblings were an embarrassment, like her mother’s sister, who’d humiliated the family by stealing from Stella? She’d left the area and never returned.
Through the tiny kitchen, crowded with modern appliances and a monster fridge covered with kids’ colouring sheets, they went outside. A dozen youngsters tore around in party hats, throwing favours, blowing whistles, and generally raising an innocent hell, grass and food staining their clothes. Every now and then one fell, but silently, without fanfare, the toddler would be pulled to his feet. First Nations children didn’t seem to have the same self-pity of other whiny kids. Perhaps it came from the days when they had to be quiet and hide from a marauding tribe. Bonnie told her that a baby’s nose would be pinched so that he would have to breathe through his mouth and not be able to cry. Was that true, or one of her mom’s rare jokes?
Terry she would have recognized from a hundred feet, thanks to that dazzling smile and soft olive eyes. He threw open his arms and grabbed her, swinging her around. Putting his hands on her shoulders to give her another onceover, he nodded in approval. Funny that she’d had a crush on him when they were teenagers. He was a few years older but treated her as an equal when they went fishing or roamed the forests. Her favourite memories were camping overnight with him, building a log, twig, and skunk-cabbage-leaf shelter and roasting a rabbit over the fire. How good it had tasted with only a touch of salt. Later he gave her the tanned skin. Yes, the rabbit was his totem. That seemed worse than a deer.
Releasing her, Terry bent down as a young boy plowed into him. Gently he set the boy free after ruffling his hair. “Take it easy, Jeremy. You don’t want to start making the girls cry now. They won’t like you when you’re ready to date.” He turned to Holly. “Gotta love ’em at this age. Later, look out, world!”
“Like us, you mean. Remember when we went camping up in the Olympics and got caught in a freak snowstorm?” Ricki came over, looped her arm through Terry’s and smiled at their reminiscences.
“I thought our parents were going to send the RCMP across the strait. When we got back to the trailhead a day late, the highway patrol was waiting for us, along with other people who’d been stuck up in the mountains at the park.” Terry had buil
t them a quinsy, a rough snow lodge. He was her first hero.
With a strong jaw, he had a neat moustache and a bold hawk nose. Damn fine looking man even if he were her cousin. Her tomboy status made her closer with the boys. A knife in a case on her belt had been standard attire when she visited her relatives, even a little axe one summer. They’d chopped alder for a raft and lashed it together. The day of the big launch, it was so heavy from the green wood that it wouldn’t support any weight and floated off. “Look out, Seattle,” Terry had said as they both waded to shore.
Terry wore a long-sleeved rugby shirt with colourful stripes. Then from a washtub of ice, he hoisted a light beer and motioned her to a canvas chair. Holly accepted a soda. It wasn’t safe anymore in B.C., even for a woman her size, to drink one beer and pass muster with the breathalyser.
Ricki shielded her eyes from the sun and scanned the yard. “I’ll find that rascal Piper. I don’t want you to miss meeting your niece, Holly. I’ll bring you a plate, too. I bet you have a hearty appetite just like your family.” Giving her husband a teasing poke in the ribs, she turned and walked toward a group of children.
With his wife gone, it was time to get serious. They spoke for a moment about the raven pendant. “I remember Aunt Bonnie’s silver raven stealing the box of light, the sun in its beak. But you’re sure it’s the same piece of jewellery?”
“There are lots around, but this one had the same small flaw.”
“I hoped someone would, well, ask questions. Never made sense to me that she just vanished, along with that Bronco.” His dark eyes crinkled at the corners. “I figured you went into the law so that you might in a better position to find her someday.”
