The Shaman's Knife (17 page)

“The calls,” he said. “None of them gave full names and all said you had their numbers—Maxine, Lois, and a woman from headquarters in Ottawa who said she and someone called Buster were very sad about your mother and will call again. Who's Buster?”

“The commissioner.”

Bouvier looked as if he didn't believe it, then did. “No kidding! Buster! Sounds almost human!”

“There was another call from Yellowknife,” he said, reluctantly. “The transport guy said that according to the weather people this storm will pass across our part of Victoria Island late today, and that it looked like the best they could do was get an aircraft to Cambridge tonight, weather permitting. It'll fly here and get you to Yellowknife tomorrow, and you could get back here on a regular flight Monday.”

Monday before I could get back here? For an instant I hated the idea of three days away. But only for an instant. What could I do about it? If the rest of it happened as he'd said, and the aircraft to be sent for me did get as far as Cambridge tonight, it probably wouldn't fly here until after first light in the morning. Let's say I'd be taking off from here around eight. Then it would take a few more hours to get to Yellowknife.

I thought, well, at least the liquor store will be open after being closed today. If it looked as if I'd be further delayed getting there, always a possibility in the capricious Arctic, I could phone ahead and get someone, Erika Hall came to mind, to pick me up something. I could have stood being dry as long as I had to be in Sanirarsipaaq. When I got to Yellowknife and did what needed to be done, all I could do now for my poor mother, I would want a drink, for sure.

All those ifs and buts were getting me down. I knew I had to snap out of it.

“Okay,” I said aloud, but to myself, “okay.” I picked up the telephone directory because I had no idea where to call and get the sad process started.

In the yellow pages under the heading “Funeral Directors” there were only four names, two in Edmonton, one in Inuvik, and the fourth in Yellowknife, the advertisement for that one reading: “Territorial Funeral Homes.”

I called the number. A suitably quiet voice answered. I identified myself and said that my mother had died there that morning and . . .

“I heard it on the radio,” the quiet voice said. “We're very sorry, Matteesie. It's a shock to us all.” Pause. “Now, what can we do?”

I was taking a lot of deep breaths again. “I would like to have everything arranged as quickly as possible for burial near Holman, where most of our relatives live. I'd like to let them know today when the service will be.”

Sometimes when someone died an air charter would bring mourners to wherever the service would take place. I didn't want that. In Holman many of our friends and relatives were too old to contemplate, or be comfortable with, any such trip. We'd go to them.

“It's Friday now,” the quiet voice said. “We could arrange that your mother could be ready to leave tomorrow or early Sunday. We could also make arrangements for the burial Sunday or Monday. Ah, would it be a Roman Catholic or Anglican service?”

I had a random impulse to ask if there was such a thing as an Inuit service with a shaman present, but I answered, “No church service, just one at the burial site. If possible with Father Lovering, he's Inuit, conducting the service. He's visiting in Sanirarsipaaq right now. I could check with him.”

“Fine. Will you call back and confirm that with me? And will you be going directly there, or coming here to accompany your mother to Holman?”

“I'll come there,” I said. “The weather forecast is bad right now, but I should be there by tomorrow. I'd like to get a flight to Holman with my mother Sunday morning.” Then one detail bothered me. “About the grave . . .” Digging graves in the Arctic in winter was difficult, sometimes impossible, sometimes could only be done with a jackhammer. Or a body was stored for later final commitment to the ground. “I'll have to check with my brother in Holman about a grave . . .”

“I think we can save you that,” he said. “Some settlements now have pre-dug graves, you know. Quite a few do that, knowing that they'll be needed.” He added drily, “They always are. They dig half a dozen or so before freeze-up. I'll check the present availability.”

A nice word, availability. What if too many died? Or not enough? I could imagine a city council somewhere else, Ottawa or Toronto, wrangling about the waste of money in unused graves, demanding that the planning officer resign. Maybe the contract had been let to the mayor's brother-in-law. Maybe the mayor's wife owned the backhoe.

But that was that. Unless I was told otherwise, a grave would be ready at my mother's settlement near Holman, certainly readier than any applicant for occupancy.

I slipped and slid up the hill to Jonassie's home. He met me at the door. I stepped just inside. “I heard about your mother on the radio,” he said gently. “I'm very sorry, of course. She and I talked often when she was here, about religion and our people's beliefs. I remember she was interested about the knife I had carved with the gyrfalcon handle that I told her had been lost.” He sighed. “Still lost,” he said.

I was momentarily elsewhere, back with mother the night I arrived in Yellowknife when she'd sometimes seemed dazed and disoriented. “She mentioned something to me about a knife that had been lost,” I said. “She was not being very rational, right then, but I heard distinctly . . . ‘The shaman . . . the knife is lost.'”

He stared at me fixedly, then shook off whatever he was thinking about and said, “I was just going to come and tell you that when I heard of her death I thought about her deeply, and what I knew of her, a fine old lady.” He stopped. I had a feeling that what he was telling me, indirectly, was that after hearing of her death, or maybe before, he had consulted his own shamanistic sources. I was right. He went on after a pause, “I believe that my familiars. . .”—by that he would mean his helping spirits—“will be tending to her soul.”

I was glad he had spoken as he did, giving me solace about my mother's soul.

Father Lovering had appeared behind him. He said yes, he would fly to Inuvik when the weather cleared, and on to Holman.

In all that time I had been performing automatically, keeping my grief at bay. As I walked down the hill my eyes flooded with tears again and were still there when I called the funeral home to say that Father Lovering had said yes, he would conduct the service.

After that call came a time when I realized that it was still only midmorning. I had the day to put in. I could not let myself be immobilized by what was going endlessly through my head. I heard later that some people thought I was callous to keep working on the day that my mother died, but that was what I did.

I doggedly made a list, organizing my thoughts. Keeping in mind that, if the weather should suddenly clear so that I could take off sooner it would be a good idea to have talked things out now.

So Bouvier and I talked, drank coffee, acted as close as we could to normal.

Bouvier hadn't been able to check the Co-op last night for money with blood on it. He had just arrived as the manager had put the safe on a time lock, impossible to open until Saturday morning. So that had to hang fire. He'd checked the snack bar at the rec hall. Nothing. The airport. Nothing.

“I'm obviously here for the day,” I said. “Let's use it. First, try to get a handle on the whereabouts of Davidee now and anybody who hangs out with him, close. Hard Hat, Ambrose Aviugana, Tommy Kungalik, anybody else you can think of who I could talk to. I know the obvious has been done. Now we have to try for the less obvious, identify any guys ever involved with Dennis, borrowing money and so on, whether they were around when the murders happened or not. Might haul some in on warrants, if we have to.”

He hesitated. “What grounds?”

“Accessories to murder might get their attention.”

Bouvier nodded, rather happily, I thought, although in the circumstances he didn't let it show with a smile. I recognized the reaction. Futzing around the edges of a crime in a preliminary way is okay in its way, necessary, but when it's getting nowhere there's no substitute for doing something real, preferably something that is not going to come back on you through the complaints bureau or a lawsuit. Muscle comes in many forms, some of them legal. I had some pretty good friends in the force who would have used legal muscle on Davidee before now, based on what we knew of his illegal movements while on parole—just to see how he reacted.

Bouvier was making notes, his own list.

“Also, talk again to the girls Annie saw. Except Maisie. She was due back tonight, but won't get here in this weather. I'll talk to her when I get back unless something happens that means you should see her before that.”

I would rather be doing all four interrogations myself, but I simply wasn't in shape. Questioning properly takes quick wits, the readiness to seize a loose end, jump on it. Even the little I was doing now came hard. From our talks Bouvier knew what we wanted to know from the three girls: details, the sex side. As for Maisie, I wanted to be there when she was hit with that business about the football player in Calgary.

Wind-driven sleet began to hammer the detachment windows.

Bouvier said, “The three native girls together or one at a time?”

“One at a time, but warn them not to talk to anybody else. Don't want them to get their stories homogenized. Tell them they'll be in trouble if we find they have been talking to one another about questions and answers.”

I made some coffee, good and strong, and drank it. Then I picked up the phone and called home. Lois must have been sitting there with her hand on the receiver. We talked. What was there to say? Not much. Funeral arrangements, bad weather, the shock that I hadn't quite mastered yet.

Lois said, “I want to come for the funeral.”

I wasn't brusque. I did appreciate what she was thinking, there at the phone in our kitchen wishing she could do something to help, but I told her definitely no. My thinking was that it would be bad enough, complicated enough, with just the people who really had loved my mother.

I felt a little mean, in effect flatly turning down her well-meant wish to help me through a bad patch. Couldn't help it. I told her about the arrangements for Holman, the reasons why I wanted to push things along so I could get back to Sanirarsipaaq right away without any more complications than I already had.

She still hadn't quite given up. “What's right away?”

“Sunday if possible.” Even while knowing that it might not be even remotely possible. But Monday would be possible, if the weather cooperated and there weren't too many other complications.

“Oh, well, then,” she said, and let it trail off. “But I'll be thinking about you.” I heard her sigh. Maybe she was even in tears. “I haven't been very good about your mother, all these years.”

I made no reply. What's done is done. This wasn't a weep-in to me, but a sad, sad end to a good life. When we hung up I called Maxine. I couldn't get her either at the office or at home. I left a message on her machine that I would be going to Yellowknife early tomorrow and later, I didn't know when, to Holman.

After that call Buster was on the line, exuding sympathy, commiserations. Maybe it's always the same, there are so few things to say that have not already been said, or thought.

“We'll send someone in to replace you if you wish,” he offered.

“No,” I said. “Bouvier is good. And I won't be away long.”

I caught Bouvier's quick, pleased glance.

Buster had something else on his mind. He fumbled a bit, then spoke bluntly. “Look, I probably don't have to tell you this, but this is police work now, not vengeance.”

He certainly would have sensed my vengeful tone when we talked while I was in Yellowknife, on my way here. But I'd already worked that matter out. I was thinking more like a policeman than I had been at first. That's what I thought, anyway. Later, it turned out, I did feel vengeful, but it didn't count in the end. “Don't worry,” I said.

When I hung up I said to Bouvier, “I've got to get out of here. The phone will keep ringing.”

Outside, wind-driven sleet was bouncing in waves across the frozen open space. I could see only one other person braving the wildness. Jonassie was heading toward me. We stopped in the shelter of the detachment. He had to shout over the noise of the storm. “I forgot to say I saw two snowmobiles going south this morning, right after the bad news came on the radio. Davidee and two others.” He said nothing more, but turned back into the wind and walked back toward his own place.

I still needed something specific to do. The morning already was dragging toward noon. I had to find ways to get through the afternoon and evening. Then sleep was going to come hard—but it would be even harder if I didn't get the hell moving now, occupy my mind.

Oddly enough, it all worked out. It was too early for the noon meal at the hotel, so I walked through the rec hall to that part of the building taken up by the ice-skating rink and watched swarms of kids, mostly Inuit, a few whites, using the day off from school to play pickup hockey. The yells and sounds of skates cutting the ice and pucks bouncing off boards and sticks crashing together sounded hollowly in the big rink. Half of them wore number 99 sweaters—Wayne Gretzky's number. They bumped, fell down, got up, slashed, tripped, hooked, wound up for big slapshots—playing a game they'd never even heard about until the National Hockey League's tough playing style became almost nightly fare on satellite television.

From the rink I went to the hotel. No one was around; it was still too early. The holiday emptiness was like a dead hand on life. I shaved and showered. When I came down, there were a few early birds in the dining room and I could hear Margaret's voice in the kitchen. I made myself a pot of tea and sat by myself near the window. The sleet had changed to snow that melted into blurred streams on the window. I looked through the crazy mush thinking about Margaret. A lot of things must have crashed before this in her life, and now she might be in for another.