Among the Departed

by Vicki Delany

  He’d pay up; they always did.

  He never would hear from them again.

  No need to be greedy. There were plenty more suckers where he came from.

  Chapter Seven

  “An adult, between five foot seven and nine. Unlikely the bones have been in situ for more than twenty-thirty years.”

  “Could be a lot of people.”

  “They have lots more tests to do down at the lab, but this isn’t a priority so we’ll have to wait. They won’t be able to tell us much more unless we can locate additional bones. A skull would be good, teeth even better, if we want to make an ID.”

  Winters shifted the phone on his shoulder and looked past his partner’s desk out the office window. Trees on the mountainside were turning yellow, and the snowline on Koola Glacier was lower than last week. “You can get DNA samples from bones, right?”

  “Sure,” Gavin said. “Mitochondrial DNA. But DNA doesn’t give us anything without something to match it with.”

  “Are you going back up today?”

  “I’m in the van. About to lose the signal. Alison’s waving her fingers hi.”

  “Hi back. You’ll let me know what you find up there?”

  “No, John, I won’t. I’m going to keep it secret.”

  Winters chuckled. “Have fun.”

  “Over and out.”

  “That Gavin?”

  Winters swung around to face the door. The boss stood there, pulling a jacket over his neatly-pressed white uniform shirt.

  “Yes. They’ve found nothing to eliminate Nowak, nothing to prove it either. We can ask the son for a DNA sample. They have enough bone to compare.”

  “Do they know we’re coming?”

  “I called Mrs. Nowak a few minutes ago.”

  “How’d she sound?”

  “Not particularly interested. I’d have expected her to at least ask if I’d found anything new. She said she’d be at home this morning. At home. Made it sound as if I’m a gentleman caller.”

  They headed out back to get a car.

  “What was your take on her, Paul?”

  “Let’s talk later. I don’t want to give you any impressions before you meet her.”

  Marjorie Nowak lived in a small modern house in Upper Town. Trafalgar was situated in a river valley surrounded by mountains so steep that houses at the higher elevation not only had a great view, they were sometimes in a different season. The yard was neat, grass cut and raked, a few clumps of well-cared for perennials still in bloom. The mountainside dropped away at the back of the property, and the rear of the house stood below street level, opening onto an alley. The woman who answered the door bell wore a pale blue housecoat, tossed over pink pajamas and white slippers.

  She’d known they were coming. Couldn’t she at least get dressed?

  “Mrs. Nowak, it’s a pleasure to see you again. Do you remember me, Paul Keller? How are you?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “I’m Sergeant Winters. We haven’t met before.” Winters held out his hand.

  She took it. It was like holding a three-day dead fish.

  “May we come in?” Keller said.

  “Of course.” She stepped back and led them into the living room.

  The house was as neat as the garden. White doilies sat on piecrust tables and a line of delicate tea cups with flowers of pink and blue were displayed in a china cabinet. A large photograph sat on the mantle. A stiffly posed family. Man, dressed in suit and tightly knotted tie; woman, stiff hair and pale blue blouse with a bow at the neck; boy and girl, early teenagers. The room was gloomy, thick curtains on the back wall shut against the light of the day.

  Winters picked up the picture and studied it.

  “My family,” Mrs. Nowak said. “That picture was taken for the church directory a year before Brian went away.”

  “Do you know where your husband went?” Winters asked.

  “Isn’t that why you’re here? To tell me?”

  Winters glanced at his boss.

  “Marjorie,” Keller said. “Human bones have been found up at Koola Glacier Provincial Park.”

  She was exceptionally pale, but at his words the last of the blood drained from her face. “Brian’s bones?”

  “We don’t know at this time. There’s no clothing, or other items that we’ve found yet. Identification has to be done and the search is continuing.”

  “You think it might be Brian?”

  “We don’t think anything yet. We wanted you to know, that’s all. It will be in today’s paper and I didn’t want you to read it there first.”

  “I don’t get the newspaper. Scurrilous rag.”

  “It is possible the bones belong to your husband, but it is also possible they do not.”

  Winters shifted from one foot to the other. Mrs. Nowak hadn’t offered them a seat nor taken one herself.

  “Thank you for coming, Sergeant Keller,” she said.

  Keller didn’t bother to correct her. She obviously didn’t read the paper, Winters thought, if she didn’t know the man was now Chief Constable. She didn’t even ask him what he’d been doing over the last fifteen years.

  “Is Kyle around?” Keller asked.

  “Yes.”

  “May we speak to him?”

  “No need. I’ll let him know what you’ve told me next time I see him.”

  “Next time? Isn’t he still living here?”

  “He has an apartment downstairs. After Brian left Kyle turned the lower level into his personal space. He has a small kitchen and I believe he set up a studio for his painting.”

  “You believe? When did you last see Kyle, Marjorie?”

  She thought for a few seconds. “A month perhaps. He helped me dig up a dead bush that had to be removed.”

  Keller gave Winters an almost imperceptible shrug. “I’d like to talk to Kyle. Can we get there from here, or should we go around the house?”

  “You’ll need to go around. He uses the stairs to store his paintings.”

  “Thank you for your time, Marjorie. Sergeant Winters is in charge of the case and he’ll let you know what’s happening.”

  She nodded at Winters and held the door open for them.

  He let out a long puff of air once they were standing on the sidewalk. “Did that seem a bit odd to you, Paul?”

  “Odd? She was positively overflowing with good humor compared to when I was working her case. She showed remarkably little interest in how the search for her husband was going. She insisted he would never have abandoned the family and that he had been snatched off the street by a, quote, sadistic sexually perverted killer.”

  “What did she have to say about the ten thousand missing dollars?”

  “He must have been planning a surprise. A vacation for their anniversary or something.”

  “Was that possible?”

  “Unlikely. They weren’t well off. Their checking account was in the red as often as not. Nowak missed a couple of payments on his car. The teachers at the kids’ school said they had the impression the family just scraped by.”

  “What work did he do?”

  “Insurance. Sold insurance for a company that isn’t around any more. Let’s talk about this back at the office. We’re creating gossip standing out here on the sidewalk. Those stairs look none too steady. Let’s drive around and see what young Kyle is up to.”

  “Is he as odd as his mother?”

  “He wasn’t back then. Who knows what the years have done to him.”

  Winters was driving the van. He maneuvered it to do a U turn on the narrow street and turned left, down the mountain, and left again into the back alley that ran behind the houses perched on the hill.

  The Nowak house had been the
fourth from the corner. Winters counted back lots as he drove.

  A deck jutted out from the upper floor of the house, casting a thick shadow over the back entrance. No lawn or garden, just a bunch of weeds sticking out of cracked and faded concrete. A car was parked under the deck, close to the door.

  “Oh no.”

  “What?”

  “See that red car.”

  “What about it?”

  “Eliza.”

  Chapter Eight

  The watercolor showed an alpine meadow on a spring morning. A yellow sun in a soft blue sky, traces of clouds fluffy and white. Grass and flowers were drawn in perfect detail, every petal exact, drops of fresh dew glistening on leaves.

  The flowers were not yellow and white and orange, they were black, brown, dark purple. The dew was not clear and pure but opaque and blood red. It was a highly troubling picture.

  When she’d seen his art previously it had disturbed her. Yet she kept thinking about it, and this morning decided she had to come back and see more.

  “Go to the craft gallery,” he’d said the first time she ventured down the cracked and wobbly cement stairs into his basement apartment, “if you want to buy a pretty painting of pretty flowers and pretty little girls playing with pretty puppies.”

  Eliza had put the picture down and selected another. The scene was similar, this time showing the beautiful lake far below where a sailboat drifted over the waves. The colors were equally angry. It was the jarring contrast of the hideously ugly flowers with the beautiful scenic background that disturbed her so much. Trouble in paradise? The fall of man?

  In the right corner she noticed a small object, almost invisible, behind a black flower. She looked closer: a pile of feces.

  She looked back at the first picture, and saw what her eyes had missed, although her subconscious had recorded. Tucked away in a corner, behind a bush that was more thorn than flower, he’d painted the bottom of a small foot. Five tiny toes, neat nails, clean, unmarked skin. The foot was pale white, with a slight blue tinge. The color of death.

  She shuddered.

  He laughed. “Exactly. You see, Mrs. Winters, the purpose of my art is not to make the viewer feel warm and cozy. We live in a world of death and disease. Violence and disaster. Only by facing it, acknowledging it, can we hope to handle it.”

  She said nothing and moved on to the next work, and the next. She rifled through paintings piled against walls and heaped on shelves. There were more in the other rooms and stacked behind doors. They were similar; stunning scenery, ugly dramatic colors, a small token hidden somewhere, a reminder that life wasn’t always beautiful. She turned to look at him. He leaned up against the wall, surrounded by unframed art, his arms crossed over his chest, no expression on his face.

  She wondered what had happened in his life to make him see the world this way. He was pale, disheveled, verging on dirty. His brown hair was thin and lifeless, cut badly, his beard long and scraggly. He appeared to live in the basement of this house, rarely left it, and accepted visitors grudgingly.

  “Your talent is extraordinary,” she said. “Do you ever do anything more, shall we say, pleasing?”

  He shrugged. “What you see is what I do. It’s what I am, Mrs. Winters.” His mouth was crowded with teeth. They crossed over each other, as if they’d fought to a draw for prominence.

  “Thank you,” she’d said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Whatever.”

  She came back this morning. He opened the door with a lopsided grin, almost as if he’d known he’d find her there. Standing on his step. He crossed his arms and waited for her to speak first.

  “Do you want to work with me?”

  “No. Do I want you to show my art? Yes. It’s time.”

  “Time?”

  He stepped back and bowed her into the apartment. The main room was his studio. Brushes, paint, sketches, half-finished canvases. The kitchen alcove was piled with dirty dishes, but there were no dishes or food in the studio. She could see into the bedroom, a small unmade bed, a computer on a cheap wooden desk, clothes tossed everywhere. But no pillows nor discarded socks or papers cluttered his art space.

  A man who could compartmentalize his life.

  He unfolded his arms and extended them. He gestured to the room around them. “Time to let my work see the world.”

  An interesting expression. Not to let the world see his work.

  “Besides,” the arms fell and he shrugged, “I need the money.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “My life is art, and art is my life. I do nothing for a living. I do some web design stuff if and when I need the cash.”

  Despite being in a basement, the apartment could have been bright and sunny. It faced south-east with an unencumbered view all the way down to the town, the river, the mountains beyond. But the deck upstairs loomed over the windows, cutting off the sun. She wondered if he’d produce more cheerful work if the light were better.

  Probably not. His art came from inside him.

  “I’m interested in exhibiting your work, Kyle. I’m currently planning a summer show, but I think your paintings might be a bit too… unconventional for the sort of people who pass through over the summer.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Your work suits November. I find November to be a sad month, all rain, dead plants, dark clouds, the threat of snow.”

  “If that’s what you expect, Mrs. Winters, you might get little puppies and pretty blond girls with hair ribbons after all.”

  Eliza studied him. Artists were supposed to be an unconventional bunch, uninterested in mundane things like money, strictly concerned with the development of their artistic vision. But most, she’d found, were very interested in mundane things like money, and ready to compromise if she would put their art in her gallery.

  She suspected “compromise” was not in Kyle Nowak’s vocabulary.

  “I am interested, but I have to be sure you’re going to be able to meet the demands of a professional show.”

  “What sort of demands?”

  “The number of paintings I require, of the quality,” It was her turn to spread her arms to encompass the art in the room, “I have seen here. They will have to be framed, and you have to put them up and take them down, or at least arrange to have that done, under my supervision.”

  “You can pick the pieces you want to use right now.”

  “I’m not making you an offer yet, Kyle, although I’m considering it. I have a friend in Vancouver who has a better idea of the art world than I do, and I’d like to consult with him first.”

  “I don’t fit into the art world.”

  “My friend will not be making the final decision, I will, but I rely on his advice. With your permission of course, I’d like to send him photographs of samples of the work. If I go ahead, I’ll want some of these paintings, yes, but I’m confident you will be producing more between now and then, and we both want to exhibit the best. If we decide to proceed with the show, that is.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’ll have to appear at the gallery several times over the period of the show. Opening night for sure, any special evenings I decide to put on.”

  “I don’t like talking to people.”

  “It’s a condition of having a show. Prospective buyers like to meet the artists.”

  “If you were showing Vermeer they wouldn’t expect to meet the artist.”

  “If I were showing Vermeer, I’d be charging a lot more.”

  He shrugged again, not much caring one way or the other. “I guess I can manage that.”

  “I’ll be in touch again in the next….”

  They heard footsteps on the stairs, and then a knock.

  Kyle looked surprised at the interruption and went to
open the door.

  Two men stood there. One dressed in casual pants, pale blue shirt, and a loose jacket, the other in the uniform and white shirt of a senior police officer.

  Chief Paul Keller said, “Mr. Kyle Nowak?” Sergeant John Winters gave Eliza an apologetic smile.

  “That’s me,” Kyle said. “I heard you were back in town, Mr. Keller. Chief of police now. Should I congratulate you?”

  “This is Sergeant Winters.”

  Kyle’s eyes registered the name and flicked toward Eliza.

  “My husband,” she said, heart in her mouth. She did not want to be involved in another police investigation. “Are you looking for me, John?”

  “Sorry to bother you, Eliza, but we’d like to talk to Mr. Nowak. Won’t take long.”

  “Have you found my dad?” Kyle asked.

  Eliza hesitated. She should be leaving, but Paul had closed the door behind him.

  “Perhaps,” John said.

  “What does perhaps mean? Did you find him or not?”

  “If you’ll let me explain. Human remains have been found in Koola Park. They’ve been sent to the university labs for testing, but the age looks to be right.”

  Kyle swayed and Eliza grabbed his arm. “You need to sit down.”

  “I’m okay.” He had been pale before, now he was the color of the foot in the painting which had simultaneously repulsed and attracted her.

  “No you’re not.” She guided him to a chair, and he fell into it.

  “I know this must be very disturbing for you,” John said, “but we thought you and your mother need to know.”

  “My mother. Have you told her?”

  “We’ve just left her.”

  “It might be a good idea for you to go up and be with her,” Keller added.

  “Maybe,” Kyle said. He began to chew at the nail on his right thumb. “What happens now?”

  “I’d like you to come in and give a DNA sample,” John said.

  Kyle shuddered. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Why not? We can compare your DNA to that in the bones.”