“I was such a stupid bastard,” William said. “I can’t believe how stupid I was.”
It was night and we were in the Cessna, William in the pilot seat and I in the one alongside. Not that we were going anywhere. They were just the best seats available. Snow was falling so thickly that I could hardly see the tip of the propeller a few feet away. Smokey was on his chain outside, silent at last, once again a victim of the ups and downs of the dog’s life; indulgence beyond one’s dreams and then back to reality, a chain leading through a blizzard to a snowbank with a dog inside, curled up snug and warm. William had possession of the only gun currently in sight, his rifle. It wasn’t pointed at me but was leaning against the instrument panel near his hand. I knew nothing of his intentions, now or ever. We had eaten and had a good shot of rum and snow. With our second drink I had a fleeting impulse to raise my glass to his and say, “To us,” but decided to save that for the movie.
“Yeah, stupid,” he repeated.
“In what way?” I was really curious about his first choice.
He just looked at me.
At first, over by his secret place after I crawled out of the tunnel, he had held his gun on me constantly, so tense that I had a feeling of imminent danger. Finding me there had not been in his plan. The first thing he said after his, “Just don’t do nothin’ funny,” had been to ask how I’d come to find this place.
I gave the brief version, flying out and losing his trail in the caribou herd, then flying out with a snowmobile and finding it again.
The mention of the caribou trail brought his first ghost of a smile, confirming that he’d thought that a pretty bright idea.
Then it was back to the business at hand. He waved his gun at me and said to shut up and start walking. I walked in front of him up the bank to the tractor road. “Walk south,” he said, which I did. He stayed watchfully maybe fifteen feet behind me. Once when a big rig could be heard approaching he waved me into the bush. We crouched out of sight a few feet apart while three tractor-trailers thundered past, a storm of swirling snow marking their passage. It occurred to me that if he decided to kill me now, I likely couldn’t stop him.
Half a mile on, off the road and out of sight, was a new Skidoo Elan. Still holding the gun on me, he steered the machine one-handed back to the road and drove dead slow behind me back the way we’d come, the gun handy across his thighs, right down to where I’d left my snowmobile. He seemed undecided for a minute, then tossed me my snowshoes.
“Where are we heading for?” I asked.
“The Cessna,” he said. At the same time he saw the radio. “Who else knows you’re out here?”
“Every Mountie detachment in the Northwest Territories,” I said. Then I had an idea that if I told him we had a call-schedule, he might order me to call in and say everything was okay. If I had that chance, maybe I could say something that would alert Pengelly, such as that Harold Johns sent his regards.
Of course, there was always the chance that Pengelly, being Pengelly, would say something incredulous that would tip William to the trick and go boom with the gun. But it was a hope, the only one I could think of offhand,
For a minute or two I thought I was going to get the chance.
“You got a call-schedule?” he asked.
I said yes, looked at my watch, and said, “In about five minutes.”
I think he definitely considered the idea of holding the gun on me while I made reassuring noises into the radio, but if so he rejected it instantly. “Forget it,” he said. “You could pass some kinda signal. Now shut up and walk.”
I walked. He followed on his machine. I thought of the pond as I’d first seen it, the snow empty of any signs of traffic. When we reached the western ridge above the pond, he stopped, staring, and convulsively shoved his parka hood back off his face. Snow had just begun to fall, flecking his long black hair parted in the middle and hanging down both sides of his head. His mouth had fallen slack below the drooping moustache. He turned his gaze slowly from one end of the pond to the other, taking in all the signs of recent activity: the rough runway Stothers had made for his takeoff, the trail my snowmobile had made when I drove down the hill to carry Johns to the Beaver, the path in to the Cessna’s hiding place.
After a long, long look he turned his gaze to me.
“Tell me all about it.”
Standing there on the hillside in the growing storm of windblown snow, I told him about Stothers bringing me out on Sunday and glimpsing the snowmobile headlight, about coming back in the Twin Otter the next day, following his track and then switching to the other snowmobile track going the same way. Billy Bob’s shot at me that got the radio instead. Killing Billy Bob. Camping by his body. Going on the next day to find the Cessna. Stothers and Pengelly responding to my radio silence by coming out to look for me. The airlift of Johns. Pengelly taking Billy Bob’s body back.
William took it all in without his eyes ever leaving my face.
At the end he sighed. In another minute he said, “So Billy Bob is dead. I like that part best. And Johns is okay?”
I said yes.
“Jesus,” he said.
In silence, we moved the last hundred yards or so through the growing blizzard, made camp in the Cessna, ate and drank, moved to the seats at the front of the aircraft and started to talk. William obviously had been thinking it all over.
“What made you stay around after Pengelly left with that son-of-a-bitch’s body?” he asked.
“I figured you’d be back I couldn’t see you leaving Johns with a broken leg, or leaving your dog.”
He nodded, even smiled, shaking his head. “That’s me,” he said. “Stupid. I thought I’d come back here, probably find Billy Bob here, kill him, lay him in with the other two bastards, take the money, and get out of here, somehow, either right out of the North or someplace safe. In a day or two, or as soon as I could, I’d phone Search and Rescue where to find Johns and Smokey. No Legs would’ve looked after Smokey for me.”
I looked across the dark at him. There was a full moon above the snow. Even with the cloud cover the night was not totally dark “Billy Bob might have killed you first,” I said. “And then Johns, to shut him up. He’d figure nobody was going to find the Cessna until spring, if then. He might’ve shot your dog, too, just for the fun of it.”
William shook his head a little impatiently. “He might have thought of all that, even planned on it, but he wouldn’t have done a thing right then, not a chance. Not until he had his money for killing my father. I don’t know what those bastards were paying him, but all I’d have to say is that they weren’t far away, and had the money, and I’d take him to them. Then at my . . . at my place . . . when he was crawling in there I’d get him from behind, no warning at all, like he killed my father. Maybe years from now somebody would find them, or maybe never.”
Thinking of that secret place of his, I’d bet on the never. He’d had it all thought out. He might have gotten away with it. A guy with that much money could get away with a lot.
“How did you manage Christian and Batten?”
“I maybe wouldn’t have even thought of it. But when I said they should get the hell out of here, Johns couldn’t fly them with a broken leg anyway, Batten said just as casually as anything, ‘We’re waiting for Billy Bob.’ Christian wouldn’t have been that dumb. I could tell by his face he thought Batten was an idiot for telling me. He was right. I’d had an idea they’d been connected somehow with my father’s murder—who else would want him dead? But I couldn’t figure out how. When they said Billy Bob was heading this way, then I knew. I didn’t let on, but I was thinking Bonner knew how to get here. He’d been the only one of the three who could know a day ahead that my father was being flown out, the only one who could get to Billy Bob fast and make the deal that he’d kill my father, the only one who could tell Billy Bob how to get here to pick up his money. That’s when I made up my mind.
“They were worried about being trapped in here for weeks until Johns could fly. I told them they could make it on the tractor road, stop a rig and get out that way, and that when Billy Bob got here he and I would follow the same way, better two guys hitching a ride than four. I took them over there early Saturday morning. We got to the other side of the road, the river side. Batten had a gun. Christian didn’t, but had the money. They were a few feet ahead of me, facing the other way. We were talking about where we’d meet afterwards in Edmonton. I kept thinking, even if they didn’t pull the trigger, these two guys killed my father.
“I got Batten from behind, three shots, and when Christian turned I shot him head on. Four shots.”
“Looked like three to me,” I said. “I missed the last one.”
We sat for a few minutes. I was thinking that apart from Bonner the case was all wrapped up if I could get out of here alive. I don’t know what William was thinking.
“I take it that when you killed Christian and Batten you became, ah, their beneficiary. You wind up with all the money now.”
“Except a few thousand I took just in case. Used some of it for that snowmobile in Wrigley,” he said. “Walk in, lay down cash. That part felt good, the only part.”
“Where’s the rest of it?”
He shrugged. “Can’t do you any good, knowing. It’s deep in the snow right where I fastened Smokey’s chain. That’s why I left him here.”
Another puzzle solved. “Wonder he didn’t dig it up and eat it.”
“Even a husky can’t eat a steel tool box.”
So we sat. I still didn’t know what he had in mind for me. It didn’t really bear thinking about, so I didn’t think about it.
Meanwhile, there were still things that bothered me. “What made you tell those guys how to find this place?” I asked. “Even draw them a map how to get here.”
“Well, I was part of them then,” he said. “And I always thought this was a wonderful place. It started when I was a kid and we were all still at home before my dad became a big shot, and one summer he gave me an old Viking five-horse motor he picked up somewhere and I put it on a square-end canoe we had. That summer I started traveling around in this kicker canoe for a week or two at a time and found that place on the river. Just loved it, fishing, sleeping, fooling around. Being alone. Thinking maybe I’d quit school and be a trapper . . .”
He said that at first he’d stayed close to the river getting his place liveable. When he started exploring a bit, he found the pond. Saw some ducks heading that way and went to have a look where they were going in. “I remember thinking what a neat place it was, just long enough to get a light plane down and take off again, and if I was ever a pilot and in trouble I’d remember it. And then once months ago in Inuvik we started talking about what we’d do if we were ever going to be busted, and knew about it and could get away—”
I interrupted. “Did you have any reason to think that might happen?”
“We’d often hear rumors and wonder for a while until they didn’t come to anything. Even a couple of weeks ago, we heard one from Edmonton that some woman cleaner in the Mountie office picked up and told her brother, for Christ sake, a dealer, that a hit was coming somewhere in the North. He passed it along.”
Hard to guard against, a woman with a druggie brother, trying to protect him. But if such information, or even rumor, was out and around, that’s how it would get to Morton. He was Mr. Metis to a lot of people, the guy with all the connections in the North, nobody knowing at that time that William might be one of those hit.
“Anyway, that time last fall when we were talking about what we’d do in a bust, there was talk about where to go that would be safe, and where we could meet later if we had to separate. I said, ‘Hey, I know the place!’ They never listened to me much ordinarily, but right away they were all ears. I drew them the map. I remember Bonner copied it, just in case. I could see it all later, that would give him what he could tell that fuckin’ Billy Bob. But at the time it was just planning, just in case . . .”
He stopped there. I didn’t actually see William begin to weep, but I saw him wipe his cheeks with his hand.
“Then a week ago last Sunday I got this message that my father wanted to see me at the Mackenzie, and I went, and right away he lit into me, insisting that I was part of a gang that was going to be busted—”
“And you were denying it?”
He wiped his cheek again, his face turned away from me.
“I never could face my father when he was like that. Even over small things I never could say, ‘Dad, you’re right, I’m sorry,’ I always tried to bluster it out, but I’ve never seen him like that. He was crying! He knew! And I was denying it, and he hit me and I tried to hold his wrists so he couldn’t, and we were sort of shoving each other, and then he went down and hit his head, and just stayed out. I called the ambulance and got him to the hospital and stayed a while, but then I went, it was one or two in the morning, and told Bonner what Dad had said to me.”
He wiped his eyes another time but his voice was steady enough. “Stupidest thing I ever did in a life of being stupid. Of course, this was what we’d made the plan for, last fall, a bust. Bonner went right to Christian with it. That night it looked as if Dad was going to die. We didn’t know where he’d got the information. If he was the only one who knew about us for sure, it would die with him. I just wanted him to live. If he came to, I’d tell him the truth, I’d ask him to help me, I’d try to be the kind of son he wanted. But Monday noon when Doc Zimmer said Dad was conscious now and again and might recover, others had, therapy, all that, might be flown out to Edmonton, that would be, I guess, when Christian would phone and lay on the fuckin’ gunman, just in case he was needed. And I think told Bonner what to do if the worst came to the worst. He’d have it all set up. Christian was that kind, a big deal planner. That’s why we did so well, I guess.
“After that Christian and Batten didn’t waste any time. Within an hour or two they took the money and flew out of there. All Bonner told me—that’s another shit, Bonner, I wouldn’t mind killing—was we were to sit tight and they’d be back if it blew over, and if it didn’t at least Bonner and I would be in the clear and we’d meet later somewhere and plan what to do next or anyway split the money.”
Another long, long, pause. Snow blowing outside. Smokey howling awhile, then shutting up. The sound of a wolf howling back.
“Like I said,” William went on, “stupid. Since my Dad was killed I’ve had a lot of time to think. I could even have been, maybe not like him, but at least better than I was. I could have said to myself a year ago, ‘William, you’re wasting your goddamn life,’ and told those guys to deal me out. I could have gone back to Fort Norman, even, and married Cecilia Manicoche . . . She and I . . .”
This time he seemed to be finished. He had poured it all out.
After a while I said, “You know they’ll probably be out for me. They know where I am and it’s been all day since I checked in. They’ll be wondering.”
He just waved one hand at what was going on outside the window. “Nobody’s flying or even snowmobiling in this . . .” Which seemed likely true.
Then he said, “I still can’t figure out how my father knew. A rumor, okay. There’s always rumors. But knowing I was part of it.”
I thought of Gloria, in love with a man who treated her gently, listening with growing despair that early morning at the Finto Inn as he talked big about a drug bust coming up in Inuvik, and finally deciding she had to warn him that unless he could head it off William would be one of the busted.
I pictured that scene as I imagined it, a weeping woman and a man shocked into numbness, but I kept quiet.
The storm was still raging in the morning when William dug up the money and left on his new snowmobile. Within a few seconds he disappeared in what looked like wall-to-wall white out. He hadn’t asked me to give him a few hours, or a day, or anything, before I radioed for help. He just left.
I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do right then, except make some tea and wait. If I went out in this stuff maybe I could and maybe I couldn’t find my way back to the river and get the radio and let the whole “G” division of the RCMP know that Christian and Batten were dead, William on the run to God knows where, Matteesie okay. I decided it could wait until I felt more like it.
I was still in the Cessna about noon, the storm dwindling away. I was thinking seriously about the snowmobile and the radio, when I heard the sound of dogs. Smokey set up a tremendous uproar outside. The other dogs were getting closer. Then I saw Edie’s team plunging down the hill, Edie riding the runners at the back of the komatik. She had the brakes on, the lead line loose around her neck. They reached the flat surface of the pond. I heard her yell, “Whoa!”
On the komatik, on his own little sled, was No Legs. I jumped out of the Cessna while Edie’s dogs flopped in their tracks, tongues lolling, panting. She ran to me and hugged me, No Legs poling himself along behind, both with parka hoods over their faces, the fringes as well as No Legs’ moustache and Edie’s eyebrows rimed with frost from their breaths. They’d left Fort Norman the previous morning. Edie’s talk with Pengelly about what was happening out here made her decide there was no way she was going to miss the playoffs. She’d arranged a few days off picked up No Legs, and here they were.
“You mean you ran all night?”
I was sure they hadn’t. No dog team could. “You think we’re crazy?” she said. “Even my lead dog can’t trail in that kind of storm.”
So they had made camp. They both looked none the worse for wear. Or even somewhat the better for wear.
“Hey!” she said. “You been listening to the radio?” Hold her mine wasn’t around right now.
“They picked up Bonner in Calgary,” she said.
Maxine’s long black hair lay spread out on the pillow. I confess that I felt rather dreamy.
“You really got here fast,” she said. “I hear in the afternoon that the mighty five feet six Matteesie has done it again, bodies all over the place, and I get home and who is here but the mighty five feet six Matteesie.”
“Unfortunately not five feet six where it really counts,” I said modestly. “Anyway, when they sent Stothers out for me they wanted me to go nonstop to Yellowknife for debriefing. I held out for Inuvik.”
“Have you been debriefed?”
I held up the covers and looked. “I must have been. Don’t see any briefs at all down there.”
It was near midnight and we’d had a few drinks and what other amenities seemed appropriate to the occasion.
She didn’t ask how long I’d be staying. I always had to tell her on my own.
“I fly out tomorrow for Ottawa,” I said. “I’ll be back sometime.”
She just nodded. No urging to make it soon. That was her way. No heat.
In Ottawa, Lois was waiting for me in the airport. She was wearing her calf-length silver fox coat. I always thought this coat was a little excessive, for a wife of a simple inspector in the RCMP.
She hugged me a lot and got lipstick on me, but I didn’t wipe at it. At least when cameras were running. In addition, she’d had her hair done a sticky new way. When my cheek brushed against it, I knew all the trouble she’d gone to.
When we got home the two Siamese cats, Murph and Surf (not what I called them), rubbed against my legs and sniffed suspiciously. As soon as Lois disappeared, I shoved them away with my foot. She came back in a peach-colored negligee and sat on the arm of my chair, this done on purpose, I knew, so that I could feel the silken softness. Which I did and suddenly felt a longing for the way we once had been. I put my arm around her and in a few minutes we were upstairs in her incredibly soft bed. In time my mind kept drifting away, so that the bed became a snowbank, and then the snowbank became a bed again.
In one of my conscious periods I realized that I was holding her in one of those ways that meant I wanted her. I rolled toward her, fumbling for the way in.
She pulled back and looked at me: blue eyes, fair hair, lipsticked mouth, a few wrinkles, a sag here and there as I also had.
“You’re not just doing this as a favor, are you?” she asked.
“No,” I said honestly.
In the morning I was up early. Among the many things that hadn’t changed was that no matter what Lois did the night before, she slept in until I called and said that tea was ready.
While I waited for the water to boil I stood there naked, potbellied, unshaved, unwashed, uncombed, and besides that a little scruffy, and glanced at the piled up mail.
An envelope postmarked MOCKBA caught my eye.
I tore it open and read laborious printing in blue ballpoint, “Dear inspector! With large sad I hear you not come Arctic Institute this time! Bloody bad! I Sibir Eskimo from Chukchi peninsula on Bering Strait! My people forefathers Eskimo your side! I famous like you! Only Sibir Eskimo anytime, anywhere, who colonel KGB! Looking forwards to get with you together for exchanging lies! Now dammit next time sure come!”
I couldn’t make out his signature but someone at the office would have a great bloody file on him, so I could reply. Only Siberian Eskimo KGB colonel—wow! Maybe we could form an association.
The water boiled. I put in three heaping teaspoons of Earl Grey tea, filled the pot with boiling water, and turned on the radio.
The top item on the CBC radio’s seven o’clock “World Report” was from Ireland, the second through fifth from the Middle East, the next three from Ottawa, then one from Washington, and I was thinking great, next come the weather and sports, when there was one from Fort Norman.
William had given himself up, the announcer said, “along with nearly half a million dollars less what he termed ‘traveling expenses.’”
He’d been in the bush somewhere with a cousin from Fort Providence, heading for a trapline in the Mackenzie Mountains where he’d never be found, when he heard about Bonner being picked up. On the spot he’d decided that he badly wanted to be a crown witness, make sure this last survivor of the murder plot did not wriggle free.
A day later, walking into the detachment at Fort Norman, he’d winked at Nicky Jerome, whose mouth had fallen open.
Then William had put the money box on the counter and called to Pengelly, who had his head down over some paper work, “Hi. I’m William Cavendish,” and Pengelly looked up, thinking it was a joke.