| |
It was after nine that night when Dan finally dropped anchor in a small cove just inside the entrance to Dean Channel. The trip across Queen Charlotte Sound had been rougher than he had hoped and he and Walker still had a long way to go to reach Charlie’s village, but it would have to be in the Zodiac. Dreamspeaker couldn’t go any further in.
They both spent a restless night. Even though the cove was protected from the wind, the waves still found their way in and Dan made regular trips out on deck to check the anchor was holding. He had dragged an inflatable mattress out on the back deck soon after they arrived and made up a bed under the coach-roof, but Walker refused to use it. Instead, he spent the night on the hard bench, wedged between the coaming and the cabin wall, refusing to move, and Dan doubted he had slept at all. Each time he had checked on him, Walker had been staring out into the darkness, and not once had he acknowledged Dan’s presence.
Light had barely seeped into the sky when Dan lowered the Zodiac into the water and helped Walker to lift his legs over the wide tubes and down into the bow. The roar of the big twin Mercury engines echoed off the rocky cliffs and sent a wide wake crashing off the steep shore as they made their way ever deeper into the inlet. The noise should have announced their intrusion long before they arrived, yet there was nobody on the floats when they reached the village. Dan ran the bow up on the beach, stepped ashore and led a rope up to a sturdy tree trunk.
“Where the hell is everybody?” he asked the man who sat unmoving and unconcerned, his arms draped over the glistening Hypalon tubes.
Walker’s lips twisted into a lopsided smile, but he said nothing.
“Maybe they all took off somewhere,” Dan said as he stared up at the trees lining the shore. “Figured they didn’t want to talk to the police.”
He thought he saw one of Walker’s eyebrows lift a fraction, but there was still no response.
“Well perhaps they’re holding a ceremony.” Dan realized he was talking to himself. “I guess I’ll go up and take a look around.”
He started towards the path leading up from the float, but Walker’s quiet voice stopped him.
“They’ll come down when they’re ready.”
Dan turned and looked at him. “Walker you know I respect their customs, but one of their people has been murdered and they asked for me to come. I can’t just sit around and wait.”
Walker smiled again and let his eyes slide behind Dan as he inclined his head.
“Don’t think you’ll have to wait long.”
Dan looked back up the path. A group of twenty or so people were walking towards the shore, some on the path and others filtering through the trees. By the time he turned back to look at Walker again, the man was almost surrounded.
The chatter faded as Dan approached and all eyes turned to focus on him. Not for the first time he felt a momentary surge of gratitude for a comment Willie Pete had made years earlier. Dan had been getting ready to leave the marina on one of his first assignments while Willie had been working on his boat.
“Looking pretty official,” Willie had said as he watched Dan untie the lines. “Gonna try and impress someone important?”
At first Dan had been confused. He was wearing his RCMP uniform as he had often done before when he was heading up to the office for meetings, and Willie had never made any comment then.
“Just heading to one of the villages,” he had answered. “Nothing major.”
Willie had grinned. “Not going to win too many hearts and minds wearing that,” he had answered, nodding at the tailored blue serge with its bright yellow stripe down the leg. “You guys aren’t exactly popular with the people.”
Dan had taken the advice to heart and since then had worn his normal jeans.
Now, as he walked back down the beach towards the inflatable, an older man stepped out of the group and walked towards him.
“Gilakas’la,” he said as he held out his hand. “Welcome. I’m George. We are grateful to you for coming.”
It was a formal greeting, and Dan responded in kind, then added, “I understand you need help with a problem? A member of your village has been killed?”
George nodded. “Yes. A young man. His name was Jimmie Alfred. He was my nephew.”
For just a moment his voice trembled and he turned away and stood looking out over the water. Dan stood beside him, not speaking. Giving him time, and space, and respect.
When George finally spoke again, all the formality had gone.
“Thank you,” he said. “This is . . . difficult. Not only for me but for everyone here. We don’t understand how it can have happened. How we can have lost so much.”
Off in the distance Dan heard the horn of a large boat sounding a warning as it entered the inlet.
“George, I don’t want to rush you, but there are others coming. They need to take Jimmie’s body back to Port Hardy so they can establish exactly how he was killed.”
George nodded. “That too is a sad thing—that he will be given into the hands of strangers.”
“I give you my word he’ll be treated with respect,” Dan said. “And he’ll come back here for burial. But could I see him before he leaves? I need to try and understand what happened”
“Of course,” George replied. “Please come with me.”
They left the beach and climbed the path to a cluster of houses that sat in a circle facing inward, their backs to the sea or the forest. The door to one of them was wide open and George ushered Dan inside.
“He has been washed and dressed.” George stood beside the table, his gaze focused on the young man lying there. “Perhaps we should have left him, but his mother needed to honour him, as do the rest of us.”
Dan nodded and moved closer, his eyes roving up and down the body which was fully dressed and wrapped in a button blanket. It was what he had expected, and he understood the need to follow tradition, but it made his job more difficult.
“Are there any wounds?” he asked.
“Yes.” George reached down and gently opened the blanket, then undid the shirt to expose four deep gashes. “These are the worst, but there are also cuts on his hands and arms and some scratches that perhaps he got from the salal where he was lying.”
Dan turned up each palm and studied it. “He was brave,” he said. “He fought his attacker.”
In the silence of the room he picked up the first faint rumble of a big diesel engine and he turned to address the man standing beside him.
“The police boat will be here in a few minutes. They’ll take Jimmie to the hospital in Port Hardy, but they will also want to take everything he was wearing—clothes, shoes, bracelets, rings—so they can examine them. It would help me if I could see them first. Do you know where they are?”
“I will show him.” The voice was soft, with the slurred consonants of someone whose first language had been the traditional tongue of her people.
Dan turned in surprise and stared into the shadows. He had not known anyone was there.
“This is Jimmie’s grandmother, Elsie.” George placed his hand under the woman’s elbow as she moved slowly into the light. “She has been staying with Jimmie to keep him company.”
Dan bowed his head in greeting and reached out to take the bundle of clothing from her hands.
“Thank you, grandmother,” he said. “I only need them for a few minutes.”
She looked at him with eyes filled with sadness, and then her gaze sharpened and she tapped the back of his wrist.
“You’re the one who found Billy last year,” she said. “You wear his bracelet.”
He nodded. “Always,” he said. “It was a gift from his family.”
Her face, seamed with wrinkles and framed with wisps of iron-gray hair that had escaped from her braid, broke into a gentle smile. “Yes,” she said. “I am glad it is you who has come for Jimmie.”
***
BY THE TIME DAN HAD examined the clothing, and Jimmie’s body had been carefully carried down to the float and loaded onto the police boat for its trip to Port Hardy, well over an hour had passed and Dan still hadn’t been to the site of the murder. As soon as the boat had pulled away, he went down to the beach to talk to Walker, who had been helped out of the inflatable and was now sitting on a log someone had rolled down onto the shingle.
“I’m going to be a while longer,” he said. “I still have to visit the murder site. Are you okay here?”
Walker gestured to the plate of smoked salmon and bannock resting beside him, and the group of people still gathered around him. “Doing better than you. They’re feeding me.”
Dan laughed, but quickly turned serious. “Could you ask them about what was stolen? I’m sure you’ll understand what it was better than me, and if I don’t have a good description, I’m not going to be able to identify it when I find it.”
Walker looked at him for a long moment, then nodded his head.
“Yeah,” he said. “I can do that, but you need to talk to Charlie.”
“Charlie?” Dan raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah. It was his regalia that was stolen.”
Dan nodded and glanced around the crowd who had fallen silent and were watching and listening as he and Walker talked.
“There have been other thefts from other villages,” he said, raising his voice so that everyone could hear. “But this is the first time anyone was murdered. Whoever’s doing this, he’s getting more dangerous and he needs to be stopped. I’m going to need your help to be able to catch him.”
He looked at the faces that were all now focused firmly on him.
“Did anyone hear or see anything? Any strangers around? A strange boat? Anything?”
A low murmur filled the air as people consulted with each other. Heads shook and faces turned somber as eyes returned to focus on him.
“Nothing.” A woman dressed in blue jeans and a heavy woolen sweater acted as the spokesperson. “There’s been no strangers here for a long time. You’re the first.”
Dan couldn’t help but smile. He was a stranger looking for a stranger, and in this tight little community, both he and any other outsider would be highly visible the moment they approached. So who was he looking for?
“How about someone from another village?”
Again heads were shaken.
“Any new crew members?” Dan nodded his head towards the boats tied out on the mooring buoys.
The response was the same.
“Okay, well I’m going to take a look at where it happened and have a word with Charlie before we leave, but if any of you can think of anything, no matter how small, it would really be helpful.”
He started up the beach but was stopped by a lone voice that rose, loud and clear, above the rest.
“It was Man-eater.”
He turned back as the conversation suddenly swelled, and listened as the comment was debated. Other names, some that Vivien had mentioned and others that he had read about, were discussed, but he didn’t interrupt until he heard a word he was already familiar with: Bak’wus.
“Someone saw Bak’wus?” he asked. It sounded odd to be asking about something he had assumed was an imaginary creature, but it was a name he was hearing too often to dismiss.
There was a long pause and then a young man stepped forward and held out his hand. It held several strands of long, greenish-white hair.