The Bone Seeker (18 page)

Edie exhaled. ‘I'm with you,' she said.

•   •   •

The blinds in Derek's window were drawn but Edie noticed that her tent was slightly open. Her first thought was that Chip had had a change of heart and she hurried over, calling his name, her heart lifting, then crumpling as a voice said, ‘I don't know who you're expecting but it's just me.'

It took her a moment to recognize the owner of the voice. She pulled back the tent flap and saw Sam Oolik sitting on the sleeping skins inside.

‘You been waiting for me?'

‘Not long,' he said. ‘Good to carve out a little quiet time anyway. I found the order, thought you'd wanna see.'

He handed over the battered black order book, a calloused finger marking the page. In the spot where his finger had sat was a line of Inuktitut syllabics with a misspelled English translation below. There was an order number, a value and a shipping cost. But it was the name in the final column that interested her.

Oolik tapped the book with his right index finger and narrowed his eyes.

‘Oh I know you're dating him, but there's more to that Muloon fella than meets the eye. I seen him talking to the colonel over at the
unataqti
camp.' He gave a triumphant snort. ‘These
qalunaat
work in packs like wolves. And they've got us surrounded.'

Derek woke with a thick head and a tongue like a dead seal and cursed himself for drinking too much. He swung out of bed, went to the bathroom and in the mirror saw eyes crusted at the edges and slimy at the inner corners. The flakes of dried saliva on his chin suggested he'd either been drooling or talking in his sleep. It took him a while to figure out that he'd been woken by the phone in the detachment office and that it was still ringing. Stumbling into the office, he plucked the handset from its cradle and cut the call. Moments later the ringing began again. He peered at the screen and recognized Edie Kiglatuk's home number in Autisaq, which meant that the caller was likely to be Sammy Inukpuk, who was staying there. Derek was fond of the fella. Back in the spring they'd spent a chill, fearful night together on the sea ice in Alaska and damn nearly died. Something like that left scars and created bonds. All the same, he found the way Sammy still prowled around his ex-wife irritating. They seemed to have some kind of on–off thing that made him impatient whenever he got dragged into it. The way he saw it, they should get back together or leave one another alone.

He picked up.

‘Hey, Sammy, you gotta know, this isn't some kind of roommate situation we got here, this is a police detachment, OK? And we're in the middle of a homicide investigation. I'll get Edie this one time, but . . .' He laid the phone down on his desk, tromped to the front door and yelled.

Edie emerged from her tent pulling on a sweatshirt and rubbing
her eyes. From the kitchenette where Derek went to make coffee and give them some privacy, he could hear her voice saying, ‘You already broke everything in my house, now you wanna come break everything here too?'

He threw some grounds in the drip and with the first dark, bitter sip, felt his brain shift up a gear. Before long his mind began to scroll through the events of yesterday until it reached the conversation with the prosecutor late last night. By the time the guy had finally returned his call Derek had already had a beer or two. He vaguely remembered kicking off the chat with a rant about how the homicide rate in the Barrenlands was now on a par with Mexico. There was something too about not even being sufficiently resourced to get a damned cell phone. It was kind of embarrassing to recall the bored tones of the prosecutor. Not that it mattered, not really. He'd got what he wanted out of the conversation, which actually had nothing to do with a cell phone (there being no tower for a thousand kilometres in any case) and everything to do with a green light to arrest Namagoose and Saxby. On one condition. The prosecutor wanted some forensics, ideally blood or other deposits on the men's clothing or on the knife. The very least, confirmation of the presence of Ambien in Martha's blood. No forensics, no arrest.

He took another gulp of coffee and refilled his mug. Now that he was fully awake he allowed himself a little uplift of anticipatory glee. Sometime this morning Anna Mackie would call to confirm Luc's initial findings. Then he'd inform Klinsman and head on over to Camp Nanook and by the end of the day the Killer Whales would be in custody and he'd be contacting his equivalent in Iqaluit, Sergeant Bill Makivik, to arrange their transfer to the jail there. It sounded almost too easy.

He came out into the office as Edie was finishing up her call and was struck by a sudden, vivid memory of being woken in the night. He stopped a moment to consider whether he'd dreamed it then decided he hadn't. Someone had definitely been hammering on the door. He'd
got up and walked through the detachment office only to find no one there. He shivered at the recall of the damp rush of cold air.

‘Was that you last night?'

She pressed her lips into a yes. There was some new anxiety in her eyes he hadn't seen before. He handed her the mug of tea he'd made her.

‘Bad night?'

‘You could call it that.'

As she filled him in on Sam Oolik's visit, he felt an obscure need to comfort her. That Chip Muloon could have had anything to do with Martha Salliaq's death honestly hadn't occurred to him. But something less honourable stirred in him. He was so near to making those arrests and this was a complication he could do without.

‘Anybody could have taken that knife from the store,' he said. He realized that he'd swung from wanting to make things easier for Edie to feeling the need to make them easier for himself.

‘Then why was Chip's reaction so weird? He must have sensed I was getting close.' Edie shook her head in disgust. ‘I was in his bed, D.'

Derek saw then that he couldn't simply ignore what was potentially an important new lead. The thought didn't thrill him much.

‘Look, I'll go see the guy. He's probably got a perfectly reasonable explanation. After all, you know the fella, you've trusted him so far.'

‘Trusted or lusted?' Edie said. ‘I may have got the two mixed up.'

•   •   •

He put off confronting Muloon till nine by telling himself that he had to complete some urgent paperwork. When he couldn't postpone it any longer, he went to the school building. The door to Muloon's office was open and the smell of newly perked coffee drifted through the gap. The man himself was sitting at his computer. His face was grey and drawn. Derek got the sense from the resignation in those watery blue eyes that he'd been expecting this visit.

‘I made extra coffee.' A flicker of hostility passed across his face. The feeling was mutual, though Derek was trying to be professional about it. He waved Derek to a seat in front of the desk.

‘Then you know why I've come.'

Muloon pushed himself back in his chair and interlocked his arms in a relaxed position behind his head.

‘This is going to be a pretty thin conversation, Sergeant. I fish and hunt and I left my good knife back in Calgary. Ahnah Oolik called me last week to say the new one I ordered was in, but since I wasn't planning on going hunting for a while, I didn't bother to pick it up.'

‘How do you account for the fact that it was found in the pool where Martha Salliaq's body was discovered?'

Muloon raised an eyebrow. A look passed across his face. Derek couldn't tell what. ‘I don't account for it. Since I had nothing to do with Martha's death, how could I?' He seemed completely at ease now. Either the fellow was the best liar Derek had ever come across or he was telling the truth. For Edie's sake as well as the investigation, Derek hoped it was the latter. He didn't really think Muloon was the killer but he didn't trust the guy. There was something opaque and vaguely reptilian about him. It was a face that resisted being read.

‘What were your movements on Saturday night?'

‘That's the easiest question in the world to answer, Sergeant Palliser, because there were no movements.' Muloon's jawbone flexed but there remained a hint of a smile on his lips. ‘I had an arrangement to make supper for Edie Kiglatuk at my house. I worked for a while, then prepared the meal. Caribou chilli, in case you're interested. When Edie didn't show, I went back to work for a while. Finished about ten, I guess. I listened to some music before having an early night.'

‘You didn't think to go look for Edie?'

The smile widened a little. ‘You know as well as I do that Edie Kiglatuk makes her own rules. I prefer to stay out of the game.'

‘Was Martha Salliaq more your kind of play, Muloon?' Derek wondered why he'd said something so confrontational.

‘If you think I killed Martha Salliaq, go ahead and prove it. But you don't, do you? So I have to wonder why you're on my turf.' Muloon leaned in. That hint of a grin again. ‘And the only explanation I can
come up with, sergeant, is that you're sore I fucked your woman.' He left a pause. ‘Good fuck, in case you're interested.'

Muloon locked eyes with him. His gaze was as sharp as a wolf's and in that moment Derek realized he'd been wrong to cut the man so much slack. He had no doubt then that Chip Muloon was capable of absolutely anything.

•   •   •

Back at the detachment, Edie was downing a third mug of tea in the vain hope that it would stop her thinking about having something stronger. Some days she found it relatively easy to keep the urge at bay but today was not one of those days. Today was a day for imagining the unimaginable.

Why had Martha Salliaq sought Willa out on Friday night? And why had he not told her? Why would Martha want to confide in her sister's boyfriend if their affair really was over? Was there some kind of rivalry going on? A love triangle perhaps? Common enough. And if the younger sibling was ‘everyone's favourite' as he'd said, then why had Willa given Martha up for Lizzie? Had Willa been playing the two sisters off against one another? From there the thoughts only got crazier and more tangled. Was it true that he'd failed to show at hers on Saturday evening because his ATV had broken down? What was he keeping from her, that sweet, solid little boy from another life, who would pass his evenings cuddled on the couch watching Laurel and Hardy movies? That sweet, solid little boy who became a drug addict, a brawler and a thief, who lost his brother in terrible circumstances but who had pulled through and seemed to have found new purpose in the Rangers. Willa the murderer? Could she imagine that?

Then there was Chip Muloon, a man she barely knew and who had done everything to ensure she never would, a man who was as much a blank now as he had been nearly a month ago when they'd first met. Why in all the time she'd spent with Muloon had he never mentioned ordering a hunting knife or having any connection to Klinsman at Camp Nanook? Perhaps he was secretive because he had reason
to be? What else hadn't he revealed? Supposing those mentoring chats with Martha about life in the south had taken a less innocent turn . . .

Way out possibilities. Almost . . .

It was the ‘almost' that made her want to drink.

•   •   •

She welcomed the distracting tramp of boots on the steps. Moments later Derek came bursting through the door wearing a dark expression.

‘Your
boyfriend
 . . .' He stepped back from whatever it was he was about to say.

‘My ex.'

The phone rang. They both looked at it for a moment. After what seemed like a long time, Derek went over and picked up. She heard him say ‘I'll switch to speaker', then to Edie he said: ‘It's Anna Mackie.'

‘I worked all through the night but the results are inconclusive,' Mackie said.

‘Give us what you got, Anna.'

•   •   •

The medical examiner began to detail her findings. In all probability Luc was right, she said, and the cause of death was exsanguination. She'd come to that conclusion partly by ruling out drowning. There were head injuries but these were post-mortem, almost certainly as a result of the corpse being buffeted about in shallow water. As a general principle, a corpse didn't bleed, but the congestion of the head with blood as the result of the buffeting could have led to gross post-mortem bleeding; though in Anna's judgement Martha almost certainly bled out while she was unconscious, but alive. The catastrophic loss of blood made it difficult to test for the disturbances of blood electrolytes normally associated with drowning but she didn't think there was enough fluid in the lungs to support a drowning case. She'd found foam in the airways, which was common in victims of drowning but this was also consistent with drug overdose. Temperature and stomach contents analysis suggested a time of death as being between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.
on Saturday, though it wasn't possible to be more precise because of the length of time that the body had lain in the water.

She hadn't been able to find any foreign DNA on Martha's body and the immersion meant that she was very unlikely to come across anything conclusive. Mick Flaherty had been focusing on the two suspects' clothing. He'd found Martha's hair on both. In addition, there were traces of Martha's blood on Namagoose's trousers, though this was menstrual blood and its distribution was commensurate with the suspect having had sex with the victim. From analysis of Martha's hormone levels she thought it likely that the girl was at the end of a period, which backed that up. No defensive wounds. Nothing under the fingernails. No abrasions around the genital area. In Mackie's opinion, Martha hadn't been raped, except with the blade, of course.

She'd left testing of the knife till last on the grounds that it was the least likely to yield any significant evidence, because of the length of time it had lain in the mud and water. There were traces of blood on it matching Martha's type but that was no surprise given where it had been found. Mick Flaherty had retrieved a hair wedged into the handle which had a sharp cut at one end and looked as though it probably belonged to Martha. That was being tested now. The balance of probabilities suggested that the wooden-handled knife Edie had pulled from the mud
was
most likely the one that killed the victim.

‘We've both done as much as we could in the time. It'll take longer to confirm the DNA evidence,' Anna said.

‘Thank you. We're grateful.'

‘Better late than never,' Anna added ruefully.

Edie asked about the drug analysis.

‘Of course. Sorry, guys, it's been a long night. The preliminaries on Martha's blood suggest she'd had the equivalent of a small beer, probably sometime in the early afternoon, and we can confirm she had Ambien in her system.'

‘Enough to knock her out?' Derek asked.

‘Plenty enough to quieten her up some. I think she was probably semi- or fully unconscious when the knife went in.'

‘That's a mercy, at least,' Edie said.

Derek pulled a notebook towards him and began frantically making notes.

‘Can you say more about the Ambien, Anna? How it might have gotten into her system, how long it would have been before it took effect?'