DAVE scratched a big X on his desk calendar. Day Number Three, and it was looking to be just as busy as the first two. The visit from the mayor, plus that call from the minster’s office had added to the already complicated job of running a detachment. He’d had a chat with Sheila too, in an effort to find out what she thought her job description was. He was pretty sure that had been a waste of breath, as she’d spent the whole meeting rearranging the binders on his shelf in order of height and colour, and talking about her husband the mayor. If only Dave could convince her to organize his desk. All of the desks, for that matter—hers was the only tidy one in the office.
First thing this morning three large boxes had arrived from RCMP Stores and Sheila was now giddy with delight. She opened the boxes, piled the clothes on the counter, and set all the clips, pins and hats in little lines on his desk. Then she called Reese in from patrol and assigned him to polishing Dave’s ankle boots.
“He doesn’t really have to do that,” said Dave. “The new ones are non-polishing, and Reese has better things to do solving crime.”
Sheila gave him a withering look of disdain. “He was on a vandalism call at the gas station. Everybody knows that the Reynolds kids did it, and their parents will just cover for them again. There’s nothing Reese can do there so he’s better off here getting you ready for the Superintendent’s visit this morning.”
Dave stared at her in amazement as she hauled out an ironing board and began to attack the shirt and pants she obviously had in mind for him to wear today. He was pretty sure this was not in her job description, but there seemed to be no stopping her.
Sheila voiced his thoughts. “And don’t you think this is in my job description! This is a one-time only favour because I don’t want the Superintendent seeing you wearing those old pants and a sweater for his first visit. You only have once chance to make a first impression!”
She continued grumbling to herself while Dave took the extra clothing through the door to his private residence. When he returned Reese had finished polishing the boots and belt and was busy adding rank pins to his jacket and hat. Sheila was meaningfully holding out the freshly ironed shirt, so Dave peeled off his sweater and took it. The room went silent and Dave looked up to see both Sheila and Reese staring at him—her with shock, him with fascination.
“What?” And then he remembered his tattoos. When you wear them every day you forget the impact of them on a first viewing. Since he only had a singlet on, the raven on one shoulder was easily visible wrapped around his bicep. The brown bear on his back extended up into his neck, there was a Celtic band encircled one arm, and a couple of birds on one collar bone. Not to mention the scars on both arms. What they didn’t see were several lash scars on his back where his father had beaten him with a belt when he was young. Hiding those marks was the main reason for the first tattoo.
“Drug squad,” he explained to Reese, who nodded dubiously and went to help Sheila tidy up the main office.
***
Dave hurried down the detachment steps. He’d managed to convince Sheila that he had time to pop over to Rosie’s before the big visit, and assured her he would keep everything clean. He could already feel the cold nipping at his ears, as he headed for the cafe.
Rosie’s was a small place, looking more like the converted front of a house. It sat at the end of a row of houses, typical of the mixed zoning—or lack of it—that he’d seen in small towns. The clapboard was painted blue, with a clean white trim, and the roof looked new. The sign on the big front window said Rosie’s Cafe, written in a bold red script with a rose painted at the end. As he got closer he could see that there were some booths under the window and a long counter with a row of red stools.
He was just reaching for the door when he heard a voice behind him.
“Hey, nice uniform Dave. On a break?”
“Oh, hi JB,” he said. “This just came in today. Might as well look like I’m in charge. Big meeting later so I’m out for some fresh air. It’s pretty cold air though, so I thought I’d drop in here to warm up.”
“I did hear the brass are coming to visit,” she said. She held the door for Dave behind her. “Hi Rosie, here’s a new customer.”
Rosie bustled around the counter’s end, wiped his hand on his apron, and held it out, “Corporal Browne, good to see you again. Glad to see you out and about. Welcome to my humble cafe, a culinary experience and home of the best coffee in the area.”
JB smiled, “The cafe may be humble, but Rosie is neither humble nor quiet.”
“What can I say?” Rosie spread his hands out. “If I didn’t like people, I wouldn’t be in the business of serving them.”
“And the name?” Dave asked.
“Bit of a story, but glad to fill you in,” said Rosie.
“Here we go,” said JB. “Pour us a couple of coffees while you’re revving up would you?”
“Honest, I’ll just give you the Cole’s Notes version,” said Rosie. “I still have to prep for supper. Grab a perch.”
Dave sat on a stool next to JB. There was a shiny espresso machine behind the counter and list of today’s specials on the wall, along with some black and white photos. Looked like they were of downtown Toronto. The booths, all along the window, were done in red to match the stools. At the end of the room was a low table, covered with magazines and papers and flanked by several comfy looking chairs. Two were occupied, one by a knitter, the other by John Hammel, from the airport. The latter looked furtively down, grabbed his coffee, and headed out the door. Dave made a mental note to check that Reese was following up on him.
“Nice place,” said Dave.
“Thanks,” said Rosie. “My wife Rosie and I had a fancy little cafe in downtown Toronto. We did breakfast, catering, gourmet lunches—mostly the office crowds. She was the real cook, I just made sure things ran smoothly. Some guy started calling me Rosie too as a joke, and it stuck. We covered for each other on everything anyway.”
“So, what brought you guys up here?” Dave asked.
“It’s just me,” said Rosie.”Our goal had been to sell the business and the property and retire somewhere with a small quiet, cafe. We’d wanted to move to a small town like this, eventually, but the busier we got, the harder it was to take time off. Then a few years ago my sweetie got sick, a hidden heart defect.”
“Oh, sorry’” said Dave.
Rosie nodded. “It was fast, she only lasted a few days. I promised to still follow our dream, so I found a rich buyer, packed up our secret recipes, and here I am.”
“It is a nice place,” said Dave, “and I’ll be eating here until my stuff arrives, I guess.”
“You’re in luck,” said Rosie. “Tonight’s special is steak.”
“Excellent,” said Dave. “I’ve a craving for one. That and good coffee.” He held his cup out for a refill.
“Let me guess,” said Rosie. “You’re a Starbucks fan?”
Dave nodded. “Yonge and Adelaide.”
“I know it,” said Rosie. “Nice view from the row of little bistro tables lined up inside. A great place for people watching. People on serious business meetings, or first dates, lots of cute young office workers all dolled up in the latest fashions.”
“Not like here,” said JB. She looked down at her plain clothes.
“You look just fine to me,” said Dave. JB blushed. Actually, she looked a lot better than ‘just fine.’
“She’s quite a catch,” said Rosie. “Anyway, my business is pretty good, even in winter. Just plain good food. I try not to be too trendy in the kinds of coffee drinks I serve either, no matter what fancy blends and names the tourists want. Geez, some of them sound like Nigel on the old Frasier show.”
JB pointed to a shelf behind the Rosie. “And for those that miss it, he keeps a tin of the Tim Horton’s blend.”
“Some prefer it,” said Rosie, “A bit of citrus, sort of nutty, but not to my taste really. I brew it on request—but I charge a premium for it.”
Rosie smiled. “So, like I say business is okay here. The mill is a big help to the town—too bad it doesn’t do as well for rest of the area. “
“What do you mean?” asked Dave.
“Well, the stacks occasionally belch out some pretty foul stuff, but the wind usually carries that away from us. However, we’re pretty sure they’re polluting the water downstream. Fishing has been down, a lot less frogs in the spring, water in the lakes there often has a strange taste now.”
Dave looked suspiciously at his coffee. “This water?”
“No, you’re okay,” said Rosie. “Town water is good, but the reserve gets theirs from wells, and they’re downstream from the mill. Seem to be more people sick in the last few years, more just tired and rundown, but some cases of cancer too. Doctors of course refuse to discuss any of the cases, citing patient confidentiality. And the manager is pretty close-mouthed about operations at the mill.”
“How about the newspapers,” said Dave. “If there’s any story, won’t they dig it out?”
“Not really,” said Rosie. “Too local an issue. Townspeople had pushed for years to get the old mill reopened, but problem was the location. The effluent would flow right through the reserve lands, and then into the Park, so local First Nations groups—and the province—made sure it never got approved. Until this new design was done, that is.”
“I’m told it’s all the latest state of the art design,” said Dave. “What would be the problem now?”
“The design is good,” said JB, “Plus this was promoted to us as a big boost to the local economy. Unfortunately, most of my people get put in relatively unskilled jobs on the main floor—low paying jobs.”
Dave was hearing a story similar to the one mill manager had told, but with a different spin.
“And no training programs either,” said Rosie.
“Exactly,” said JB. “And the mill messed up the whole retrofit program. Nothing specific, but there were problems during start-up, and after that too. There always seems to be whole areas of this fancy new equipment shut down and waiting for some crucial part on back order, or they’re doing preventative maintenance, or realigning and recalibrating something. The reports all looked good at the annual shareholder meetings, though, the data shows that all is well within the limits.”
“But nothing criminal found?” asked Dave.
“Nothing proven,” said JB. “The company sent their own investigator, but they never disclosed what he found—not so far. Initially he asked some questions, held a few information sessions, but now he seems to spend most of his time being wined and dined by the managers in their big fancy homes. The company is proud of this mill as an example to other mills, as is the government, so I suspect no one wants to know the truth. In the end we ended up with a mill not much better than the previous designs from the 50’s had been, but a lot more expensive.”
It sounded to Dave like even if there had been some shady dealings, it would take a lot to dig it up and prove anything.
“What about your dad?” he said.
“My dad was looking into the pollution, especially in the water, when he disappeared.”
“He was working for the mill?”
“Ha, no way!” she said. “No, he fought them. He’d earned a science degree a while ago from Guelph in Environmental Biology, and decided to go back and do a Masters. He was looking into the actual impact of these newer, supposedly cleaner mills.” She paused. “Maybe he should have stayed in Guelph.”
Rosie reached over and squeezed her hand.
“Her dad was collecting more samples,” he said, “up from university, last spring. He’d been here the summer before, said he only had a few minor gaps to fill. He’d decided to go out for one last field trip before flying off to a conference on pollution. He’d already done a lot of trips. Last one had been in February.”
“In the winter?” said Dave. “Isn’t everything frozen and dead?”
JB shook her head. “Not to a biologist, and not to the ‘Nish, my people. For us, the winter is still alive, just different. My father was looking at the fish, to see how many had survived over the coldest part of the winter, and taking samples. It was at the beginning of April, but still was cold enough for him to travel easily. Spring break-up wasn’t due for another couple of weeks. He could still go onto the ice—carefully—and drill holes for his gill nets and sampling poles. He had already found some disturbing results the summer before, pretty high values in heavy metals and other toxins he said. He’d talked to people in town about it, too. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so vocal, because he went out one day and never came back.”
Dave said, “I looked into some of it already in the file, it looked to me like a pretty thorough search.”
“Oh, it was,” she said. “The mill shut down most of the shift and sent everyone out to the area around the lake he’d been going to check out. Hundreds of searchers. They found nothing.”
“And his samples and results so far?” Dave asked.
“Gone,” she said. “I checked his stuff here, but couldn’t find anything. I called his supervisor back in Guelph, he said there was nothing there, that he must have had it all with him.” She paused. “Deep down, I know he’s not just missing. Somehow, he died out there in the bush. I just need to find out what happened to him. Will you help me?”
“I’ll try,” said Dave. “There’s not much in our detachment files to build on, but I’ll be working with Barretto on mill issues, and I’ll get him to check his files on this.”
“You might want to be careful how close you get to him,” she said. “He may not be all that sincere.”
“Thanks,” said Dave, “but he seemed pretty willing to help. I’ll see. Right now, I need to get back to the office. Thanks for the chat.”
Rosie watched Dave walk across the street. “What do you think,” he said. “Will he help us?”
“Not sure,” said JB. “I’ll let you know after I talk to him some more. I’m getting a mixed vibe so far.”