Ragged Lake

by Ron Corbett

  Yakabuski got dressed, took his service revolver from the nightstand, put it in his holster, and headed to the bar to relieve Buckham. It was 5:55 a.m. He had figured on two-hour rotations, with each cop getting four hours’ sleep and the day starting at eight. But when he reached the bar, he found Buckham having coffee with Roselyn and Gaetan Tremblay. John Holly was sitting at the bar with Downey. The waitress was sitting at a service table next to the doorway leading to the kitchen.

  “Hope you don’t mind, Yak,” said Buckham. “They came out and asked if they could have some coffee. Said they couldn’t sleep. I figured I could watch ’em here as easily as I could down a hallway.”

  Yakabuski nodded. There would be time to talk to Buckham later.

  “The coffee has only been on a few minutes, Mr. Yakabuski,” said the waitress, walking over to him. “It should be good and fresh. I haven’t seen Charley yet to get breakfast started. Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “I can probably get something started.”

  “I’m fine. Thank you, Marie.”

  She walked with him to the coffee urn on the service table and stood beside him. She wore the uniform she’d had on the day before. The name tag was still pinned above her left breast.

  “Did you get any sleep?” asked Yakabuski.

  “No, not really.”

  “Not even in a good bed in a warm room?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What is it you want to ask me, Marie?”

  She looked startled. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. But I suspected. What’s on your mind this morning?”

  “Well, it sounds silly, but I’m not sure who else to ask. Am I working today?”

  . . .

  Yakabuski sent Downey and Buckham to get everyone else from the rooms, and then he sat at the table with the Tremblays. He had given the waitress the answer she wanted. Yes, you should work today. Stay busy. I think we need another pot of coffee.

  He had interviewed her briefly last night and knew she came from Buckham’s Bay and had been working at the Mattamy less than two years, a job she got because an aunt once worked in the kitchen. She moved around the restaurant setting down cutlery and coffee cups. She considered this a good job. A lot of girls she grew up with were doing nothing at all, she told him. Queuing just for jobs at corner stores.

  He wasn’t sure if there was a mill still running in Buckham’s Bay. Maybe some small saw mills, but that would be it. He wondered what the main industry in the town was these days. As he sipped his coffee, Holly moved over from the bar to sit with him. For more than a minute, the two men took sips of coffee but did not speak, their cups rising and falling like the pegs of a piano.

  Finally, Holly smacked his lips and said, “So what are we doing today?”

  “You’ll be staying at the lodge. There’ll be some more police officers arriving on the train tomorrow. We’ll get everything settled away after that.”

  “We just sit here for the whole day?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who do you think killed that squatter family?” Holly said it quickly. As though trying to surprise Yakabuski. Get him to reveal some truth about the crime or the investigation he wanted to keep hidden, before he had the presence of mind to conceal it. A trick that would never fool Yakabuski and only worked to frighten the Tremblays, both of whom gasped in choir-like unison.

  “I have no idea, Mr. Holly.”

  “You think it’s one of us?”

  “Again, I have no idea.”

  Yakabuski took another sip of coffee. If it had just been Holly, he would have left it at that, but the Tremblays were so pale and scared-looking it was cause for concern. So he added, “I’m not even a hundred percent sure this is a homicide case, Mr. Holly. It was getting dark when we were at that cabin last night. We could have missed something. We may go back today, find a gun, and then what we have is a sad story of a family that headed into the woods thinking they would start a new life, go back to Walden Pond or something, but it didn’t turn out like that, not near like that, and when they realized they weren’t going to make it, they sat down and for whatever reason decided they had no place left to travel. We may have a sad story like that. In which case we’ll all be gone on the train tomorrow, and your lives can get back to normal. But you need to sit tight today, Mr. Holly.”

  The old woman was nodding her head. “We will need our medications this morning, Mr. Yakabuski.”

  “I will have a police officer take you to your home right now, Madame. Get what you need. Clothing as well. The officer will help you.”

  “Merci.”

  When the old couple left, Holly started to chuckle.

  “There were three of you in a one-room cabin, and you may have missed a gun?”

  “Stranger things have happened, Mr. Holly.”

  “I suppose.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Downey brought down the cook, and in a few minutes the smell of bacon came from the kitchen. Buckham brought down the Sports, the bartender, and the tree-marker. The waitress went back and forth between the tables, refilling coffee cups and taking breakfast orders. While they waited, the Sports read newspapers that had come in on the train earlier in the week. Holly started a fire in the large stone fireplace. The tree-marker kept his head turned to the table, only occasionally looking up to glance at either Yakabuski or the waitress.

  Downey and Buckham sat at their own table. Downey’s resentment about coming to the Northern Divide had disappeared as soon as they entered the squatter’s cabin, and it was hard for him not to show his excitement right then. Buckham was having the same problem. This had not been a hoax. This had not been a waste of time. This was a legitimate crime scene with persons of interest all around them; the cops kept glancing around the room, not even bothering after a while to come up with a pretence — Is the coffee ready? Has the sun come out? — gawking like tourists almost, as alert as they’d ever been, as alive as they’d ever been, and the reason both almost jumped from their chairs when the phone behind the bar rang at 6:35.

  The bartender gave a quizzical look, put down his fork, and walked behind the bar to answer the phone. He talked for only a few seconds, put down the handset, and walked to where Yakabuski was sitting.

  “It’s for you,” he said.

  . . .

  Yakabuski sat behind the desk in the office he had used the night before and stared out the window. The thin red line had not budged, although it looked slightly out of focus now, shimmering above the treeline like something electric. He looked at the barometer affixed to the wall outside the office window. Twenty-nine-point-eight and falling.

  “This is Detective Frank Yakabuski with the Springfield Regional Police.”

  “Detective, good morning. This is Colonel Russ Salo with the Department of National Defence. We received an inquiry last night concerning Guillaume Roy.”

  “That would have come from me, Colonel. I believe Mr. Roy is the victim in a homicide case I am investigating.”

  “You believe?”

  “That’s right. I have three bodies in a squatters’ cabin near Ragged Lake, a little town north of Springfield. No identification on the bodies or in the cabin. The man was getting a National Defence cheque mailed to him at a fishing lodge here. Payable to Guillaume Roy. Would you happen to know Mr. Roy?”

  Clicking noises came through the receiver and there was a long pause before the man answered, “Detective, this was a preliminary call back to ascertain the nature of your inquiry. Now that I know, I can transfer you to our personnel department. Someone there can help you with next of kin information. I’ll save you some time and put you in touch with a sergeant major I know over there.”

  “Appreciate that, Colonel Salo,” said Yakabuski, taking a sip of coffee and staring out to where the sun should be. “Befor
e you do that, can I ask you two quick questions? Why is National Defence sending a cheque to someone in Ragged Lake? And why is a Special Forces colonel responding to my inquiry instead of that pencil-pushing sergeant major you want to transfer me to.”

  This time the pause was so long Yakabuski began to wonder if he had lost the line. Or overplayed his hand. Finally, he heard, “You know me?”

  “I’ve seen your name in the papers, Colonel. And yes, I guess I know you. I did eleven years with the Third Battalion, garrisoned out of Fort William.”

  “Yakabuski. Right. I’ve heard of you.”

  “Then why don’t we start over? I need to know everything you can tell me about Guillaume Roy.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Still a bit unclear on the concept here, Colonel. I get to ask the questions. But I can tell you he was murdered, shot to death, along with what we’re assuming were his wife and daughter. It’s an ugly crime scene.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Likely happened two days ago. We have a killer still on the loose. So if you can . . .”

  “Bakovici. That poor fuckin’ guy . . .”

  “Sorry?”

  “. . . it just kept coming for him.”

  “Colonel.”

  “Sorry. It’s just a bit of a shock. Yes, I knew Guillaume Roy. I served with him. He was from Springfield originally.”

  “What do you mean it just kept coming for him? What happened to him?”

  “Bak-o-fuckin’-vici, that’s what happened to him. Ever hear of the place?”

  “Sounds familiar. Can’t place it.”

  “Why would you? There are so many shitholes in the world these days, it’s hard to keep track of them. But for a little while, that was the world’s number one shithole. Tito’s little gift to the world.”

  When he said Tito, it all came back to Yakabuski. The story, the location — it came back so completely he was looking at forested hills and dirt, the switch-backed roads, the bridges of Sarajevo, the sound of artillery fire, the smells of sweet dough cooked over an open fire, fermented yogurt, peach Schnapps.

  “Bosnia,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “An insane asylum.”

  “Yep. About fifty klicks outside Sarajevo. Guillaume and I were in the company that liberated it. Or found it. Everyone in charge of the hospital had bugged out by then, so you can’t really say we liberated anything.”

  “That’s how he ended up in Ragged Lake? I’m not following you, Colonel.”

  “What the fuck. He’s dead, right? You’re telling me he’s dead?”

  “I believe so. Yes.”

  “What does your man look like?”

  “Early forties, blond hair, little over six feet, I’m guessing. Good shape.”

  “Are you taping this call?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’re ex-military: you should enjoy this. The biggest Special Forces fuck-up you’ve never heard about.”

  . . .

  Colonel Salo started by saying the hospital wasn’t on any maps. The old Yugoslavia government wasn’t keen on letting people know they had crazies. Would have blown the superior-socialist-man argument out the water if they had to admit they had people as fucked up as those capitalist bastards. So Tito kept the hospital a secret. The Canadian Special Forces platoon found it while marching into Sarajevo, surprised to find a building of that size not on any of their maps. They didn’t go right in because of that. Not sure if they were looking at some top-secret military base. Put the place under surveillance. And watched while three nurses were murdered.

  “They were thrown off the roof of the building with clotheslines tied around their necks,” said Colonel Salo, his voice now purposeful and sombre, a man with a sad story he needed to tell. “Our commanding officer thought it was a trap and wouldn’t let us move in. Guillaume was furious. As mad as I’d ever seen him. We did nothing. Sat there and watched as those nurses were strung up on the wall like a load of whites.”

  Yakabuski turned away from the window. Stared at the handset in his hand. Wondered if he had heard right.

  “When we finally got the order to move in, it was unimaginable, what we found,” continued Salo. “The patients had been running the place for about two weeks. The doctors were all Muslim and had fled from the Serb army, which had the hospital surrounded. We found dead bodies everywhere. In hallways, in beds, some starved, most of them murdered. The stench would knock you out. There were flies and rats everywhere. People had been cannibalized. People had been boiled in the laundry vats. When you walked around Bakovici, you had trouble believing people could treat other people that way.”

  There was now no stopping the story Col. Salo was hesitant to begin, his words coming out hurried and unabashed, like a confessional.

  “We spent a night there and the next morning continued on to Sarajevo. Guillaume was in the company that stayed behind to secure the building and start burying the dead. The night we left, a group of patients who had hidden in a secret passageway snuck out and took the company prisoner. All eight soldiers.

  “We didn’t get back for three days. When we returned, the only one still alive was Guillaume. It was disgusting, what had been done to our guys. Anyone who saw it probably still has nightmares. I know I do. Two of our soldiers had been boiled in a laundry vat. Four had been tied to posts in the middle of the cemetery and the Serbs had used them for sniper practice. One was never found.

  “Guillaume was kept alive, though. For some reason, he fascinated the man in charge of the inmates, a professor from Belgrade who was at Bakovici for raping and killing some of his female undergraduates. He handcuffed Guillaume to a bed and tortured him.

  “When I had the clearance, I read the medical reports. I had always wondered what happened to him. The professor would stare at math equations he had written on the wall, then say, ‘You see it, don’t you? Why don’t you tell me what I have missed? It’s pain, isn’t it? The way it begins?’

  “And then the guy would stick a scalpel into Guillaume. Cut him open. Burn him. The doctors who treated him in Sarajevo said that the professor must have been an expert in torture to have done all he did but still manage to keep Guillaume alive.

  “It was the worst combat incident in the history of the Special Forces. The brass back at HQ couldn’t believe it — seven Special Forces soldiers taken out by a bunch of nutbars in a Bosnian psychiatric hospital. It was a fuck-up beyond imagining. We told the families of the seven soldiers that they had been killed by snipers in Sarajevo. For four of them, it was almost true. The rest of us were told what happened at Bakovici was an Official Fucking Secret. Don’t talk about it.”

  “What happened to Roy?”

  “He was sent to St. Anne’s Hospital and stayed there nearly two years. One of the doctors there thanked our colonel for bringing him in. Said most of his torture victims were old men whose memory had gone. It was rare to have someone Guillaume’s age. Can you imagine ever being thanked for a thing like that?”

  Yakabuski would have been in Sarajevo that same spring. Would have been in the hospital where Roy was treated. He dredged his memory, trying to remember if he had heard the story, but nothing came to him. Special Forces would have buried this one deep. Salo was right about that.

  “Where did Roy go after St. Anne’s?”

  “He never came back to the unit, so I’m not really sure. I heard he became a bad drunk. If I had lived through what Guillaume did, I probably would have become a bad drunk, too.”

  “But he was getting a cheque from National Defence. Not a veteran’s cheque. He was still serving.”

  “That sounds right. If Guillaume had been mustered out, his medical files would have been transferred to Veterans’ Affairs. No fucking way that was ever going to happen. Just stay away. I’m sure someone explained that to him.”

&n
bsp; “Any idea why Roy would be living in a squatter cabin on the Northern Divide?”

  “I’m guessing to fall off the planet. Isn’t that what you’re guessing?”

  “Maybe. But there are easier ways to do a thing like that. You can go off-grid twenty miles from Springfield.”

  “Maybe he went mad?”

  “I’ve been inside his cabin. I’ve been inside homes where someone has gone off the rails, and your old friend’s cabin isn’t like those places.”

  “Maybe you can keep a thing like that hidden.”

  “Not where you live, you can’t. Least I’ve never seen it. That cabin was a family cabin. Nothing mad or crazy about it.

  “I’m out of ideas, then.”

  “I think there’s a third option. For why a man would be living in the middle of nowhere.”

  “I suppose there is.”

  “Do you think there could be something to it?”

  Colonel Salo took his time before answering. Finally, he said, “If Guillaume was hiding from someone, I have no idea who. Bakovici was nearly twenty years ago, Detective Yakabuski. I wish I could be more help to you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Yakabuski’s first case as a major crimes detective — after working nearly three years undercover with the Popeyes, thinking he had seen every act of depravity and cruelty known to man — was a double murder in Cork’s Town, top-floor apartment on North-Western Street. It was a hot day, and he’d had to walk eight flights to reach the apartment.

  Lying in the kitchen was the body of a crack dealer who had owed money to a street gang with roots going all the way back to the Shiners. The dealer had tried to run but not been smart enough to run from Springfield. His pants were pulled to his ankles and his severed member had been stuck in his mouth. His throat had been slit as well, and blood had pooled around his head so that it looked as if he had a wild red beard. He had been laid out with his legs straight and his hands folded across his chest, and from a distance — if you didn’t know it was blood, didn’t know it was his cock — you might have thought he was sleeping peacefully, although on a kitchen floor with his pants pulled down.