Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery

by Scott Young

  Now I did think of the simple logistics of lining up a contract killer familiar with both handguns and snowmobiles, briefing him in a fairly substantial way, and having the job done between one night and the next. Central Casting would have thrown up its hands and said, “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

  It would help if he knew the Norman Wells airport setup, but it wasn’t necessary: all the other four knew. And there had been lots of money to offer. Fifty thousand, say, could get many a nasty thing done.

  Christian would have known that as long as Morton was in hospital, bumping him off and getting away with it would be just about impossible. But even on Monday noon everybody was being quite open at the hospital about Morton maybe being moved. That would give Christian, if he was calling all the shots, the idea that bumping him off at Norman Wells was possible. But because he wasn’t going to be there, he would tell Bonner everything to do; to keep a close check on Morton’s condition, when he’d be moved, how, and when to make the phone call to put into effect what Christian already had decided they’d do, maybe even making the arrangements on spec.

  I’d been thinking all that to myself. This phone call had been like a conference, with silences. Now I said the obvious. “He must have known somebody to call who could get to Norman Wells Tuesday before the first flight that could carry Morton.”

  “Then as a safety backup,” Ted said, “he decided he and Batten would get out right away, Monday afternoon, with the money, thinking it would be easy enough to come back if Morton died naturally, or if murdering him took the heat off. It all figures, even the part about leaving William and Bonner behind. Not a bad plan. They’d have no drugs, no large amounts of money, really not a hell of a lot we could hang a charge on. We had to catch them with evidence or there was no goddamn case. We didn’t know then about the likelihood of half a million bucks.”

  We’d pretty well covered it all, except, as I put in, “The only hitch being that on the flight out they seem to have disappeared out in the bush somewhere, maybe dead for all we know. Or maybe alive, figuring out their next move.”

  I still didn’t mention my theory that maybe they were waiting for the murderer to show up and then all go together.

  A few seconds of silence ensued before he sighed, “Well, I guess that’s it, Matteesie, except for finding the bastards. We can hold Bonner on the assault business with Gloria when we catch up to him. But until the search planes can get into the air again, which looks like tomorrow, from the forecast, we’re up the creek on Christian and Batten. And what about William?”

  The inspector’s question was still hanging there when a woman came into the detachment office, shoving back her parka hood. She was young, fit-looking, somehow like one of those women who run, not jog, a few miles a day. When I heard her ask for me, I had an idea she was the dog-team lady. She had a very determined expression.

  I answered Ted’s question about William. “Having trouble catching up to him, too. Keep you informed.”

  “Please do that.”

  I also decided not to tell him my dog-team idea right then, but hung up and went over to the counter, smiling my best smile.

  She was smiling, too. I soon found that she almost always smiled. It had nothing to do with having a kindly disposition. “I’m Edie McDonald,” she said. “I teach at the Chief Albert Wright School and have a dog team, as I believe you’ve heard.”

  I liked her looks. Good mouth, no makeup, curly brown hair cut short but not too short. A big nose. Once I read that people with big noses are almost invariably forceful and rather prying, which might be the derivation of the derogatory tone one uses when referring to people who stick their noses into things. Until I got to know Edie McDonald I thought that was probably just an old wives’ tale, like women being the weaker sex.

  I also soon found that most of the time, no matter how tough she was being, she smiled, putting people off guard and leading them to think of her as that nice Edie McDonald. Until they found out differently.

  “That man with no legs came over to the school a little while ago and said you were interested in borrowing my dog team for some important police business,” she said.

  “That’s No Legs Manicoche,” I said, figuring she should know his name. Did I say I liked her smile? Nice big white teeth. She seemed very much the co-operative type. Might even think I was cute.

  “No Legs. Very descriptive,” she said, smiling at me winningly. “Imaginative, even. I used to know a man with only one leg, but they called him Stumpy, which I thought was not very precise.”

  I like chatty women. Actually, I know a lot of them,

  “Anyway,” she said. “About my dog team, the answer is, no bloody way.”

  I’m afraid I stared. I also spluttered. It is somewhat of a tradition in the north that people pull together, help one another, trust the police not to ask favors unless they are important. A stranger appears out of the blizzard and you share what you have to eat and drink.

  Edie McDonald was not like that at all.

  “This probably surprises you,” she said.

  “Yes, it does,” I said. It was no trouble to look hurt. I felt hurt. “I’m here on a murder investigation. There’s a man I have to question who has gone off into the bush south of here on a snowmobile. I don’t know where he was heading so I don’t know where to go to look for him. But I know that a good dog team has a lot of advantages in a search like that.”

  “They’re a hell of a lot quieter than a snowmobile,” she said.

  “Right.”

  “And they tend to go where someone else has been. I mean, left to their own instincts they like to follow a trail if there is one, which there won’t be much of after all this wind and snow.”

  I agreed with that, too. So I knew that any pitches I could make she already knew and didn’t have to be told.

  “A good man has been killed,” I said, and even that seemed to come out lamely. “His son has disappeared and might be in trouble himself. I just thought you might like to help.”

  Talk about lame. I could catch out of the corner of my eye that Pengelly was trying to hide a smile. Nicky Jerome wasn’t even trying to hide his. They must have run into Edie McDonald before.

  “Let me tell you,” she said, never ceasing to smile. “When I first came north, I didn’t know my ass from third base. I also got bored to death. I almost even took up knitting so I’d have something to do besides drink and deal with guys making passes at me. I mean, I could have stayed in Calgary and done all that.”

  I thought of remarking that I imagined she would be very good at it and no doubt, with her looks, would have lots of practice.

  I might have said that to some women. But it would not be smart, I felt, to say it to this one.

  Just as well. “That was four years ago,” she said. “Then I decided, screw this. I’d always had dogs at home. Show dogs. Show dogs were no use here, some bloody husky would eat them, and then I read an ad in News North. Six-dog team for sale. Easy terms to responsible person. I went to have a look. They were skin and bones, they always cost a lot to feed, but at least the guy who owned them had done the best he could until he realized he really couldn’t afford them, what with his wife having to stop work when she had a baby.”

  There she smiled brilliantly. “‘It’s an ill wind’ . . . anyway I bought them, along with some harness and a broken-down komatik.”

  “And you got them in shape,” I said winningly. Any compliment in a storm. “What did you feed them?”

  “Frozen fish. You can get them in Inuvik at a dollar per fish. Then I bought a good pickup in Edmonton and drove it to Inuvik over the Dempster Highway and fitted it up so that I had six dog cages in the bed of the truck. The fixed-up komatik rode on top of the cages. Took me months to get the whole outfit operative, dogs healthy and all. Then every winter weekend and sometimes in between I’d go out with the few o
ther people in Inuvik who had dogs, and I had fun. But I got tired of Inuvik. Too civilized, too many civil servants. Guys I’d rejected before were making passes the second time around. So when the job in the school here came up I applied for it and got it. Last summer I put the whole outfit on a barge, pickup, dogs, dog feed and all, and came down here where there’s more places to go that aren’t full of people.”

  It was a long speech but apparently she had enjoyed making it.

  “After all that,” she said, “you can understand my dogs aren’t for loan or hire. I drive them myself; nobody else does. But I thought instead of just saying no, I should explain why, and that’s why.”

  There are some people you can argue with and maybe convince, I had just about decided on the evidence that she wasn’t one of them. Which meant, almost, that that was that. But then I had one final crazy idea. What the hell—I really didn’t like the idea of going after William on a snowmobile. With him long gone by now, God knows where, I didn’t think I’d have a chance.

  “So what you’re saying is that nobody but you drives your dogs, but you like getting out and around and doing interesting things.”

  She smiled. “You’re a quick learner.”

  “Okay,” I said, “how about we provide all the dog food and guarantee in writing return of your dog team and equipment in exactly the condition everything is in now, you to be the judge of that, and you come along and drive.”

  She looked at me piercingly. For the first time she wasn’t smiling. I had an idea I was being summed up mainly from the standpoint of, could she stand my company?

  “You know something about dogs?” she asked, and then the smile returned. “That’s probably a dumb question.”

  I nodded. Twice, to cover both the question and the related opinion.

  “You got a deal,” she said.

  Pengelly and Nicky broke up in the background.

  “Right now,” she said, looking at a big gadget-filled wrist watch she wore with the face of it on the inside of her left wrist, “I’m due back in school for one o’clock. We could get the outfit ready after school tonight and go tomorrow.”

  She was scarcely out of the door when the phone rang again.

  “It’s for you, I can tell,” Pengelly said. “What you need is a bloody social secretary.”

  Gloria now had her voice well under control. “I remembered something,” she said. “Last summer there was a big guy here. I remember him because he said he was from Nashville, but had never been to the Grand Old Opry, couldn’t stand country music, liked hard rock better, like Black Sabbath. He was a friend of Batten’s, they’d known one another in the States, and Christian seemed to know him, too. The three of them were drinking at the Inuvik Inn. When William and I got there and we were introduced the guy said that where he came from any woman who wasn’t white would screw anything that moved, and is it the same with you, sweetie? William jumped up and there would have been a fight but Batten held them apart, and then we left.

  “Anyway, his name was Billy Bob Hicks. One night a month or two later when Batten was high and happened to mention Billy Bob and William said he was an asshole, Batten told William not ever to say that to Billy Bob’s face. He said that one guy in the world he’d never fool around with was Billy Bob, because he shot first and asked questions afterwards, and if he hadn’t done that once too often he’d still be tending bar in Nashville, instead of Yellowknife. I just thought it was a lot of drunken Yankee bullshit at the time. Now”—she paused—“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m crazy, but I been thinking about him, and I can imagine him doing . . . that . . . to Morton.”

  “Tending bar in Yellowknife,” I said. “You know where?”

  “No, but people would know him. He’s really tall. When he was here he had his hair cut long at the back and short on top and he has a long jaw, I remember his jaw. And he blinked a lot, as if he couldn’t see very well. And he sort of slouched when he walked.” She stopped and there was a silence. “Thought I should tell you.”

  I phoned Yellowknife and got a sergeant I know and said, “I’m going to describe a guy to you, maybe from Nashville, southern accent anyway, maybe a bartender there, name might be Billy Bob Hicks.”

  I repeated Gloria’s description.

  “Well,” the sergeant said, “that fits a guy who’s worked for two or three places around town, but the name is wrong. This one’s name is Dave something. I’ll find out for you.”

  “Can I hang on?”

  “Sure.”

  He was back in a couple of minutes. “Dave Hawkinsville. What do you want to know?”

  “Where he was Tuesday and Wednesday.”

  “I’ll call you back”

  He called in about an hour. I was sitting by the phone eating part of Pengelly’s lunch. Normally he ate at home, he said, but his wife, Bertha, worked two days a week in the Child Development Centre and Friday was one of her days. Bertha Pengelly’s salmon salad sandwiches had more onion and mayonnaise than Nancy Paterson up in Norman Wells put in hers, but were equally good. It really helps to know guys whose wives are not above making good, or even excellent, sandwiches.

  My sergeant friend in Yellowknife detachment said, “The guy I mentioned, Hawkinsville, flew to Edmonton Monday on Northwest Territorial’s evening flight. They fly two a day to Edmonton, the morning one to Edmonton International and the evening one to Edmonton Municipal, so that’s where he’d go, to Edmonton Municipal. Seems it was sort of a surprise to the place he worked, but people do decide things’ suddenly around here sometimes, especially when it comes to getting out in January. Told a couple of people he wouldn’t be back, but to think of him lounging on the beach at Waikiki. His ticket was just to Edmonton, one way. People said he got a phone call at the bar around one or so in the afternoon, bought his ticket about two. Took all his stuff from the hotel where he was staying, so I’d guess he was serious.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “And damn it.”

  “Take it easy, Matteesie.”

  About an hour later I called the sergeant back. “Look.” I said, “this is a long shot, but it’s on the Morton Cavendish murder and long shots is all we’ve got. You don’t have a picture of that guy Hawkinsville, do you?”

  “No. I checked. He’s been clean here. Not squeaky clean, but no charges. A Metis woman complained he’d tried to do it to her, but there really wasn’t enough to lay a charge on.”

  I said, “Know anybody who was on the Tuesday Canadian Airlines flight from Edmonton that goes through there in the morning?”

  “I’m pretty sure I could find somebody. You mean the guy might have come back?”

  “It’s worth a check. Like I told you, a long shot.”

  But long shots do come in sometimes. The sergeant called back at four to say that a bank loans officer who knew Hawkinsville slightly from drinking at a place where he’d worked thought she had seen him on the Tuesday morning flight from Edmonton. “But she was coming off a holiday and was slightly hung over herself, she says, and walking along an aisle she was past him before she really took a good look, and then she figured she must be wrong. This guy on the plane didn’t have a moustache and Hawkinsville did.”

  Of course, he could have shaved it off. Making at least two men in the world, him and me, with no moustache. “Know anything about his habits?” I asked. “I mean, interests?”

  “No. What is it you’re looking for?”

  “A guy who’s at home on a snowmobile and knows something about the bush and maybe has an interest in guns.”

  “Well, the snowmobile fits. He left his here with a dealer, for sale. I don’t know anything about an interest in guns. You think he might be the guy who shot Morton?”

  “I’m just guessing. A fairly flimsy tip.”

  “Better put it on a telex. Then more people around here can be watching, or might know something.”

 
So I asked him to put it on telex to Edmonton, asking for a check of the flight crew in Canadian’s Tuesday flight north for anyone who might remember seeing a guy of the following description on that flight, or any Edmonton counter agent who sold him a ticket from Edmonton to Norman Wells or beyond for that flight, and to ask around for any other Yellowknife-bound passenger who might have noticed him.

  His height, southern accent, slightly hunched walk and habit of blinking, as described by Gloria, could be Dave Hawkinsville or Billy Bob Hicks or both in the same skin.

  Chapter Seven

  Heading out of town the next morning a little before ten, the beginning of enough daylight to run by, lights still showed in most windows, falling in yellow rectangles on snow piled against the sides of houses. Edie’s dogs belted along at a gallop, running fresh, the big, the small and the middle-sized, all of them mixed breeds with some husky here, some wolf there, and a lot between—including a black-and-white bitch named Alice that looked like a border collie. If any of the few Fort Norman people about were curious, none showed it. There weren’t that many dog teams in town any more but Edie’s was seen often enough to be glanced at and then ignored. The temperature was minus thirty-six and the sun wasn’t due above the horizon until about 10:30, but was reflected in a growing rosiness on clouds to the south. Including the pre-sunrise half light now and twilight at the end of the day we’d have maybe seven or eight hours. If we used it all and hadn’t found William, we planned to stay out overnight.

  In some ways I was reminded of moves when I was a kid, except that our loads then were a lot heavier. Hell, we even used to pile stones on komatiks when we were training young dogs, to get them used to the weight they might have to pull when things got serious. No Legs and I didn’t add that much to the weight. When we started, Edie was on the back, No Legs and his sled ahead of me on the komatik along with bedrolls, food box, primus stove, its fuel, rifle and a seven-by-seven nylon tent that weighed like a feather compared to the old caribou-hide jobs of my childhood.