Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery

by Scott Young

  I was having fun. Why not? So the quarry was maybe a murderer, maybe an accessory or accessories to murder, or at the very least clues as to the present whereabouts of same. I felt good, No Legs felt good, and I had an idea that Edie wouldn’t be here if she didn’t feel good. All in favor? Carried.

  Up front Edie’s lead dog, a half-husky, half-Labrador named Seismo, was straining into his collar in a manner that struck me as dedicated. Earlier when the dogs were being unchained for harnessing, No Legs kept catching my eye and jerking his head at Seismo and then grinning, one old dog man to another. Seismo had snarled and lunged at every dog in turn except his obvious favorite, the smallish Alice. Such behavior wasn’t unusual in a good lead dog, the daily reminder: I’m the boss. Kicking and flailing with whatever she could grab, Edie would straighten him out.

  But then he had showed another side: Seismo the comedian. When Edie was hooking him up and had the harness only half on, he rolled on his back waving his legs in the air like a puppy, his eyes never leaving Edie as he calculated how far he could push her. Her string of mule-team curses informing him that party time was over seemed to be as much a part of the routine as his fooling around, because then he stood like a rock while she completed his harnessing, and if any of the others so much as moved while they were being hooked up he’d snarl and plunge threateningly. Now on the trail he was out in front, leaning into his collar, belly close to the snow, legs pumping powerfully, his traces the tightest of all. Nose to tail behind Seismo, the others, good strong dogs, leaned hard into their collars and traces under the lead line that ran back to Edie.

  Edie left her perch occasionally to glide along on her snowshoes when a slope ahead made the pulling more difficult. I started out doing the same in such situations. It’s the decent thing to do, you know, saving the dogs. The first time we had a slope to climb I was off and running easily enough.

  I had a new set of what are called trail shoes, just like Edie’s, narrower and more tapered and therefore a little easier to run on than standard snowshoes. I felt real good in them the first time—for several minutes. Then I began to struggle. Somewhere over the years my old easy mile-eating gait had abandoned ship. Thighs and calves cried for mercy. Thank God for the komatik, on which I flopped, to wide grins from Edie and No Legs.

  It didn’t soothe my damaged ego to think what I’d shelled out for them last night at the Bay. Reminded me of Tom Berger’s 1975 inquiry into environmental and social impacts of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. Chief Paul Andrew of the Fort Norman band, testifying passionately in defence of traditional Native lifestyles, had detoured briefly into the white man’s justice system. He called it, “A system which punishes Indians for stealing from the Bay, but does not punish the Bay for stealing from the Indians.” The chief could have included Eskimos as well. The only alleviating element was that they were well-made, and by Natives of here, not of Taiwan.

  Coming out of town we traveled along the south side of the Bear River until we got to where No Legs had last seen William. There No Legs stretched out an arm to point the way more or less south. At the signal Edie yelled, “Gee!” and Seismo wheeled abruptly right, into the bush.

  No Legs had never stopped smiling from when I first saw him that morning. He was good-looking anyway, with deep set eyes and a broad face now mostly covered by his balaclava. He and Edie must have been about the same age and although neither was exactly Rotarian by temperament they were close enough to talk and did occasionally even after we set out, No Legs soon calling the dogs by name.

  “I think that Seismo like that Alice,” he called once.

  She laughed. “You’re not kidding. Marriage made in heaven. Don’t think I’d even have to chain that dog as long as I chained Alice.”

  Bush isn’t great for dog teams—they’re better in the open—but this stretch we were going through now had been open enough for a snowmobile and was only a little more difficult for the dogs. After days of snow and wind, naturally there were few signs that anything except animals, whose tracks were everywhere, had passed this way. Yet what signs there were, we found. I came to have more and more respect for Seismo on the lead. He either sensed the course that William had followed, or was making the same decisions as William about which was the easiest way to go. Edie rarely interfered. Twice in the first fifteen minutes after leaving the river, we’d seen on open spots the unmistakable serrated tracks of a snowmobile, hardened and swept clear by the wind. Both times these were at the top of rises where the bush was thin.

  It was a nice day, clear, no wind, no noise to inhibit conversation. Edie, seeming hardly breathless at all after running up the rise we’d just negotiated, was doing trapline research. She’d have to call to be heard, and he’d call back.

  “What’s the best day you ever had on your trapline, George?” she asked once.

  “Nine,” No Legs said. “Four beaver, three otter, two marten.”

  “Was this after you lost your legs?” Edie asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you skin them right on the spot, or what?”

  No Legs: “Depen’s what time o’ day it is, how cold, how much more trapline you got. If you’re gain’ to be out long they freeze and you can’t skin ’em frozen, but in my shack I got a stove and if I got a frozen animal I put it unner my bed for the night. By mornin’ it’s thawed. I skin it then.”

  We had come to a down slope. Edie jumped back on the sled. I lumbered along off to the side, getting a little better with the trail shoes, watching for signs but not really expecting much right there with the snow deeper in a sheltered hollow.

  “Do you ever find animals dead in your traps?”

  “Naw, If they’re there long enough, prob’ly somethin’ eats ’em.”

  Somewhat startled, “What? I mean, what would eat them?”

  “Usually wolves. Maybe wolverine. Anything that’ll eat meat. One time I got sick and couldn’ get on the trapline for five days and when I did wolves had eaten everythin’ ’cept a fox who’d dug hisself away down in, two or three feet into the snow, and was dead. Maybe they didn’ know it was there.”

  “I guess you’d feel bad when they get wasted that way.”

  “Yeah, I hate to lose anything.”

  I thought he realized she meant something else, that he’d feel bad about a trapped animal unable to hide or defend itself, but if so he decided to avoid that debate. Still, his answer could have been taken either way. Even about his lost legs.

  “Ever trap a wolf?”

  “Yeah. But I don’ set that size traps no more. I used to rub beaver castor on the bait for wolves. They go crazy for it. They’d dig halfway to China to get at it. But now the size trap I set for smaller animals won’t usually hold a wolf, okay with me. I’ve found traps sprung, bait gone, wolf tracks around,” He paused. “You get out here with no legs and a 150-pound wolf stuck in a trap, you might just wish you was back in town, drawin’ welfare.”

  They both laughed.

  We went on, skirting clumps of bush, tough hills, as William’s snowmobile trail did. An hour out, the day by now nearly full daylight, we stopped, unloaded tea Thermoses, and called Fort Norman by radio.

  “Anything doing? Over.”

  Pengelly was on duty. “The rescue people are out, but they ain’t finding anybody to rescue. Over.”

  “What’s the word from Inuvik? Over.”

  “They found that Bonner guy and, urn, interviewed him a little.” I think he meant, interviewed him hard, “Decided to forget the assault charge for now and see if he led them anywhere on the main event. Over.”

  I had an idea. “This frequency we’re on, like, if that downed plane is anywhere around, could it be picking us up? Over.”

  “Sure, wanta send a message? We only take personals. Over.”

  His kidding about personals was a reference to the highest-rated radio program in the remote district
s, called the “Northern Messenger,” Babies born, deaths, birthday wishes, broken bones, liquor charges, instructions on what pattern of china to buy or what a polar bear skin sold for; anything and everything is the show’s stock in trade.

  I didn’t have a message to send to Christian, Batten, Johns and Company, but I couldn’t help wondering if they were out here somewhere, listening. Or if the guy who killed Morton Cavendish could hear us, he couldn’t be far away, either, wherever he’d holed up. Or even William—the whole goddamn bunch of them, huddling around their radio like fans listening to the final game of the Stanley Cup.

  All along, we were getting just enough show of snowmobile tracks, and once a plastic Baggie like those kids take to school holding their lunch, to keep us feeling that William had gone this way, too, a couple of days before. Apart from that, what we saw was snow and bush. A porcupine had eaten the bark from halfway up a tree. Tracks large and small were everywhere. Flocks of ptarmigan in their winter white burst out of cover now and again.

  Once the Number 5 dog tried to take off after a rabbit and caused a tangle, plus getting chewed somewhat by Number 4 and Number 6 and a mean snarl and dirty look from Seismo. Another time Number 4 took a chew out of Number 3 and right away there was a hell of a dogfight going on, mainly Seismo against the world, but before they could get the traces in much of a tangle Edie waded in with her whip and got them separated without much damage done. She ran her team as expertly as any dog-team driver I’d ever seen. Her commands naturally weren’t in the language I’d heard most as a child, but had heard lots of since. She’d yell “Chaw!” for the lead dog to go left, “Gee” to go right, “Mush” for go and “Whoa” to stop. I’ve known dogs long ago who wouldn’t know what the hell to make of that.

  When I thought of William somewhere ahead I wondered what frame of mind he might be in, why he was out here, whether he was armed, and what he might think about being followed. My alertness on this score was sharpened somewhat by remembering last night’s dinner at Pengelly’s, after I’d met Edie at her place and quickly became convinced that she had everything well in hand and wanted no effing (as Charlie Paterson might say) interference.

  Earlier, Bertha Pengelly had dropped in to the detachment in late afternoon to say that if I could stand caribou sauerbraten and dumplings I was welcome to come to dinner. At this, Pengelly had said he had some rum but no mix, so when I was buying my snowshoes at the Bay I also bought mix. We’d eaten the sauerbraten and dumplings and it was great, although Bertha said it was even better with musk-ox and told Pengelly if he ever got a chance to transfer to Sachs Island detachment, where the musk-ox were plentiful, to take it, and they’d have me to dinner again. Some woman. Anyway, we had eaten and we were drinking and talking.

  “I had something last year like you might get ahead of you tomorrow, y’know,” Pengelly said, glass in hand, stripped down to braces and shirt and pants in the comfort of his own home.

  The living room was maybe twelve by twelve, and included a chesterfield, two big chairs, the TV set.

  “I mean,” Pengelly went on, “going out into the bloody bush not knowing when a goddamn gun is going to go off and drop you bleeding in the snow.”

  “Which is very white, and sets off the blood nicely,” I said companionably. After the second drink, rum can be like that.

  Bertha had been listening. She appeared in the kitchen doorway. She must have weighed 200 pounds but on her it looked all right. Her face was pretty, and cheerful, and she had nice hair. Whether this shade somewhere between off-white and golden was its original color, I have no idea, but it was fluffy and fell in curls over her forehead and around her ears, and besides that she had personality.

  “Yeah,” Pengelly mused, “You get these things sometimes. I sure as hell remember this one.”

  “Come on, Steve,” Bertha protested. “You’re not going to tell him that story, are you?” She turned to me. “It’s all about how he got scared damn near to death.”

  “Well,” Pengelly said, “since it’s the only time I ever got scared since I used to be undercover in Toronto as pals with a lot of hair-trigger coke importers, I gotta tell it, don’t I? It’s all in the line that when you’re hunting somebody you gotta be careful, what’s wrong with that?”

  The wind had died down outside, the sky clearing. We knew the search people would be in the air at daylight for sure, meaning that when my safari struck off with the indefatigable Edie and her dogs, we’d be checking by radio often in case everything got solved before we had to make some really interesting decisions about sleeping arrangements in our tent.

  “Ah, well, what the hell,” Pengelly said. “We just came here in the fall a year and a half ago, you know. So last spring I’m pretty green and I get a call, maybe six in the morning, that there’s a body in a snowbank down by the old fort. The guys who found it had been out drinking, that seems to happen a lot when the days get longer and there’s a lot of steam to let off, and when I get to the alleged body what I find is that it isn’t really a body at all, she’s not dead, just damn near dead, had hell beaten out of her with this guitar.”

  I sensed that I was in the middle of events beyond my control but I had to say it. “This guitar?”

  “Yeah! This guitar! Actually, the guitar was very important in court later. What happened was there’s this guy called Oscar Frederickson, an Icelander from Manitoba, lives with this Metis woman out on the other side of Bear Hock, near the winter road to Norman Wells, and he got a cheque for something, yeah, I remember, got an income tax refund from when he worked on the pipeline, and of course he and his lady—”

  “That! God! Damn! Word!” exclaimed Bertha, enunciating each word separately, for emphasis. “Lady! Used to mean something. These days it means bugger-all! Except maybe somebody who gets laid a lot, if you ask me.”

  “Finished?” Pengelly asked, after a pause.

  Bertha nodded decisively.

  “Okay,” said Pengelly. “Oscar and his woman come to town with the cheque and start boozing and spending the money, and one of the things he buys is this guitar. That’s what sets off the riot. Some of the evidence in court was that they’re in this dining room at Bear Lodge and she throws a bowl of barley soup at him and some of it got into this guitar, which really pisses him off, and she’s yelling that he couldn’t even playa goddamn ukulele, let alone a guitar and him yelling that he can learn, can’t he, if every goddamn sideburn in the world can play guitar, he can learn it, and so on, and the upshot is when they get out of there and start lurching around the streets looking for the way home he beats the shit out of her with the guitar. Smashes this new guitar all to hell. Trouble is, he thinks he’s killed her. On the way home he meets a guy, in fact, and tells the guy he killed his la . . . pardon me, woman. The guy he tells is the second one who phones me about it, two calls in about five minutes, and when we all meet at the so-called body, which by then has come to and is really hurting, the poor woman.”

  “If this was any other story, it already would be too long,” Bertha said.

  He sipped his rum and said, “So I get her to the nurse and she’s got broken ribs and maybe concussion and for sure a broken nose, she’s all beat to hell, so I’ve got to go out and bring Oscar in.

  “So I go out there, it’s April but the winter road is still in use, and I get as close as I can in the police van. I’m beginning to think a little about he’s probably still drunk, maybe still drinking. Oh, yeah, it had snowed overnight, too. So I walk up his path in this fresh snow and I can see smoke coming from his chimney, so I know he’s there. I mean, I think he’s there. I go and knock on the door, and when nobody answers I open it. There’s nobody there but there’s coffee on, not even dripped through yet, which I take as being a clue that he hasn’t been gone long. Then I notice that from his window I can see my van. So he’d seen me coming. Then I notice that in his gun rack there is no gun. Then I notice that the back
door is slightly open. I have a look and can see in the fresh snow there’s this one set of footprints, heading for the bush.”

  My drink was empty and I didn’t even notice. “So you came back and got help,” I said.

  “That’s what he should have done,” Bertha said. “The stupe.”

  “I didn’t even think about it, right away. I start following his tracks. When I get out of his clearing, there go the tracks off into the bush. That’s when I begin to go slower and even stop and look hard at every bush or tree near where his tracks went, and suddenly I thought, shit, if he doubled back he might be fifty feet from me and I don’t know it. I know he’s out there, he’s violent, he’s got a gun and he thinks he’s killed this, urn, woman he’s been living with. So what’s he got to lose by shooting me?

  “I can tell you, I was damn scared. Every step I took it got worse. I thought I was going to, well, you know, mess my pants, I was so scared. I’m even thinking how loud a bang a gun would make on a quiet morning like that. So you know what I done?”

  “Did,” Bertha said.

  “What I done was yell as loud as I could, ‘Oscar!’”

  “And from behind a tree not a hundred feet away comes this yell back! ‘What?’ he yells.”

  “‘She isn’t dead! She’s gonna be all right!’”

  “There was a pause and then he called, half crying, I could tell, ‘You’re not shittin’ me?’ “

  “So I said I wasn’t, and he came out and got into the van with me and came back to the detachment to get charged and then I drove him and his, urn, you know, home.”

  Well, so much for that. It surfaced in my mind once in a while, helping me pay attention to what lay ahead. We came out of the bush and started along the ice of a smallish river. “This here’s the Big Smith,” No Legs called. “Runs into the Bear back apiece.”