The Trickster. Muriel Gray
and the same bizarre, nauseating outrage. It had to be the same person. And it looked as if Joe might have died for being half-Indian. Only problem with that was why the Indian-hating killer would wait twenty years to strike again. It wasn’t as if there was a shortage of Native Canadians to tempt him to take one out. Why now? Why Joe?
Bob Cochrane interrupted Craig’s nightmarish thoughts. ‘You think there’s a connection?’
‘Of course.’
Cochrane leaned back on his chair, swinging on the two back legs. ‘Heck of a long time ago. You’d think if it was a serial killer, he’d have killed again before now.’
‘Maybe he has. But not here. Can we run this on the computer?’
Cochrane leaned forward, his chair coming back to earth with a thump. ‘Craig. I know how you feel but you know you’re not supposed to be doing this.’
‘I haven’t been told who’s going to be the investigating officer from Edmonton yet.’
‘But you will. Leave it for him. You were too close to Joe.’
Craig looked across at Bob Cochrane. He had known Joe too. Yet it would be deemed suitable for Cochrane to investigate and not Craig just because they were in different detachments. It was stupid.
‘So what would you do, Bob? Just leave it if you thought you had a lead?’
‘Yeah. I think you should. You don’t want your wrists slapped. This isn’t much of a lead anyhow.’
Craig laughed in a hollow sarcastic way. ‘You think an identical murder only a hundred miles away, albeit twenty years ago, is no lead?’
‘We came up with nothing last time.’
‘So we have a chance to nail the bastard this time. Joe’s body wasn’t lying there for twenty years. It’s fresh in the morgue, Bob.’
Daniel came back in with three coffees and a sad little plate of cookies.
‘Don’t like to hurry you sir, but the pass’ll be pretty much blocked when the ploughs stop.’
Craig snatched a cookie from the offered plate while still looking angrily at Cochrane. ‘Can I take this file, Bob?’
‘You know you can’t, Craig. It’s here for when the investigating officer needs it.’
Craig crunched his cookie and nodded. It wasn’t the investigating officer who was going to have to go back to Silver right now and fob off the press with maybes and don’t knows, while all the time knowing they had something that looked like an Indian-killer on their hands. An Indian-killer who’d got away with it maybe more than once and then made a big mistake. He’d killed a cop.
Craig kicked back his chair and shut the file. ‘Thanks, Bob. We’ll get back to you.’ He looked across at Daniel Hawk, holding the cookie plate like a mother at a child’s birthday party. ‘Through the proper channels, of course.’
He made to leave, and then hesitated. ‘Incidentally, how long from the discovery of the body until they stopped investigating?’
Bob Cochrane swung back on the chair again. ‘Two, maybe three months. Like I said, there was nothing to find out.’
Craig looked across at Daniel Hawk, then back at Cochrane.
‘They closed it because it was just an Indian, didn’t they?’
‘No. Like the file says, they can’t be sure it was an Indian.’
‘The file says the body was wrapped in a stitched buckskin sack. Is that an Indian burial, Hawk?’
‘It’s an old way. It’s pretty unique to the Kinchuinicks. Usually used for someone important. They use pine boxes now like everyone else.’
‘And the investigating officers at the time knew that?’
‘Sure they knew it. I worked on this case, remember?’
Craig grunted and looked back at Cochrane.
‘Doesn’t mean it was an Indian. We got no proof of that.’
‘Get real, Bob.’
Bob looked at Daniel with some embarrassment. Both Craig and Daniel saw that it was true.
The two men left the room, bracing themselves for a fight through the snow back to their homes on the other side of Wolf Mountain, and for the storm that they felt brewing between those green cardboard sheets.
She was always waiting at the window and Katie always pretended to hide behind the big Engelmann spruce in Mrs Chaney’s front yard. Katie peeped from behind the trunk and saw Jess laughing behind the glass, while Mrs Chaney approached from behind with her tiny coat as though it were a net in which to snare her.
Jess was all dressed and ready with her mittens on when Katie stomped the snow off her boots in the lobby of the big old house, its floorboards thumping to running feet, and the high rooms booming with the shouts and shrieks of the other children still waiting to be picked up.
‘Here she is, Mrs Hunt.’
Katie swept her daughter into her arms. ‘Thanks again, Mrs Chaney. Have you been good, sweetheart? Have you had a nice day, huh?’
‘We don’t speak through the children at this crèche, remember, Mrs Hunt?’
Katie was so desperate to laugh she buried her face in Jess’s coat. Sam did an impersonation of their fierce childminder that blew her away. So she was an old ratbag to the parents, but she was all they could afford. Jess liked her and the climate of chaos caused by dozens of children running wild in a big house, but Katie and Sam reserved the right to think the woman was a jerk. The phrase Elsie Chaney just delivered was the one Sam used when he wanted to crack up his wife. Sometimes he would duck beneath the comforter in bed and re-emerge as Mrs Chaney.
Katie recovered and withdrew her face.
‘No you’re right, Mrs Chaney. I’m sorry. Has Jess been good?’
The wide fifty-year-old woman crossed her hands in front of her and smiled. ‘This little pixie has been a perfect gem. A perfect gem.’
Jess shrieked in delight at the bare wall over Katie’s shoulder, deafening her mother in the ear nearest the outburst.
‘Okay. I’ll just pay you now if I can, Mrs Chaney. I think we owe you for last week too.’
‘No, your husband settled up last Friday thank you. Just this week is due. Shall I?’
She held her arms out for Katie’s wriggling child, so that her customer could get to the cash in her pocket-book.
Katie handed over the beaming Jess and dug around for her dollars.
‘I believe this blizzard is one of the worst I can recall.’
Katie was still fumbling.
‘You’re right, Mrs Chaney. It’s a stinker. But you have to admit the snow’s real pretty.’
Mrs Chaney wished to admit no such thing. ‘Claimed a life a few nights ago I hear.’
Katie looked up. ‘Oh?’
‘Joe Reader. You know. Estelle Reader’s husband.’
‘My God. What happened?’
Katie was horrified. She knew Estelle Reader to nod to in the supermarket, no more, but she was genuinely shocked to think of her being widowed so young.
‘Few nights ago, Tuesday it was, his pick-up went over the cliffs at the top of Wolf Mountain.’
‘My God,’ repeated Katie.
‘That’s