A Door in the River (7 page)

It was a huge room, at least the size of a football field. It looked like it could hold five thousand people. As she walked toward the back, she saw, through a cut-out in one of the walls, that there was a little poker room with men in it gathered around tables. She turned away and walked toward the table games. Men and women sat or stood around these tables, throwing dice or placing bets on green felt. The occasional hoot of triumph broke through the low-level hum of disappointment. As if a sound were being played through individual speakers scattered throughout the area, she heard the same defeated groan go up in one place and then another. There was something … 
damp
about the whole place, as if everything and everyone in it had been swabbed down with a moist, dirty cloth.

She paused at the craps table, which had raised sides and a playing field within it. She watched the impenetrable ritual, and the people participating in it watched her and Constable Bellecourt nervously. One man rolled the dice while others looked on and sometimes everyone cheered and sometimes a few people cheered and others emitted the defeated groan. And then sometimes, the three-man crew running the game would suddenly take all
the chips and the baize would be left bare. She shook her head in wonder and walked toward where there had been a huge roar. This was a roulette table with people standing around one side of it three deep, and the croupier was shouting, “Twenty-three black! Big winner!”

Hazel leaned over the shoulders of the people at the rear of the crowd and saw the croupier putting a heavy Plexiglas cylinder on top of a pile of green chips. The croupier was bringing out a big pile of purple chips and stacking them at the back.

“Two-hundred straight up pays seven thousand,” he said, and he pushed the purple chips onto 23.

“It’s a lot of money,” said Bellecourt, and Hazel involuntarily brought her shoulders up around her ears. “Unfortunately, it has the steepest edge in the house and people who get hooked on the game lose a lot of money.” They stepped away from the action. Bellecourt was smiling. “I was wondering if you want to meet Lee now. I told him we were coming.”

“Will I have to shake his hand?”

Bellecourt grinned. “No. But I might have to kiss him.”

“Why don’t you run off and get him.”

“Well, he can come and meet us. I told him we were coming.”

“I’ll be fine here for a minute, don’t worry.”

Bellecourt dashed away, happy to be of service, and Hazel continued down the line of table games. She wished
now she’d brought a picture of Wiest with her so she could show it around, but she was already drawing on the fact that one had to have a card to get into the casino. She’d start there with the manager and establish whether Wiest was even a member.

The amount of activity at the gambling tables was bewildering to her. She walked slowly through them, heading toward the gift shop, and at the bottom of the aisle, Bellecourt was waiting with an imposing man stuffed into a grey suit. She was holding hands with him, but when she saw Hazel, she disentangled herself.

“Lee, this is Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef.”

Hazel offered her hand to him before he could stick his own out. She was getting the hang of this place. “Lee …?”

“Travers,” he said. He was a strong-looking, beautiful fellow, with a muscular neck. She placed his accent as Midwestern.

“You’re not from here?”

“Ann Arbour,” he said.

“Lee was in the casino management program at U of M. There was an opening up here, and luckily, he applied for it.” She was gazing up at him hungrily. Hazel understood why Constable Bellecourt was so smitten with this wholesome Midwesterner. He looked like a movie star.

“Lydia tells me you’re investigating the death of that guy they found in the parking lot up the road,” he said.

“That would be true.”

“I have to say it’s shocking when something like that happens up here.”

“Meaning murder isn’t common on the reserve?”

“Murder? It was a murder?”

“Did you know Henry Wiest?”

“Maybe we should go to my office. We could talk there without all the clanging and banging.”

“Two cops and the casino manager’s bad for business, huh?”

“Take a look around you, Detective Inspector. Nothing distracts these people for long. I just thought we’d hear each other better.”

“No, that’s fine,” she said, “I’m not planning on staying long.”

“I’ve seen the man’s picture now, but I didn’t know him,” Travers said.

“Can you tell me if he was a casino-goer?”

“I can tell you if he was a member of the casino.”

“Well, that would be a start.”

Travers unhooked a rope from its stand and went behind a row of tables where an entirely other kind of business was going on. Men in suits and women in long skirts populated this area, which was full of computers and drawers and security guards wandering back and forth. Travers was surprisingly spry for a big man, and he turned this way and that, putting a hand on one person’s shoulder, then another’s, passing a friendly word. It had to be a
big job, keeping people this focused and motivated in an environment of odd extremes. He stopped at a console in the middle of the work area and typed on a keyboard. His fingers seemed too big to press the keys accurately. A moment later, he returned, shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Was he a sneaky type?”

“Sneaky?” she asked.

“It’s not impossible to get a membership card made up in a false name. Or to come in with someone else’s card.”

“Why would a person do that?”

“Because they’re
sneaky
,” said Bellecourt, and she and Travers shared a little laugh.

“No. I don’t think he was the sneaky type.”

“Then he wasn’t here,” said Travers. “He wasn’t a member.”

“Okay, then,” said Hazel. “Maybe the two of you could fill me in on a couple of other things, then.”

They waited patiently, like children.

“Does this place foot the bill for the station house and the hospital?”

“Absolutely,” said Travers. “And the skating rink, and the community centre.”

“Isn’t it a little hazardous having a casino right in the middle of the reserve?”

Bellecourt answered, smiling. “For who? Natives suffer from gambling addictions at about the same rate that non-natives do. But we keep an eye on the community
and we try to identify problems before they get serious.”

“So some of the profits here go into your addiction-counselling programs?”

“No,” said Bellecourt. “The province pays for that. Part of the original arrangement.”

Hazel was shaking her head. “I’m sorry if this comes out the wrong way, but that’s a hell of a sweet deal.”

“Well, it’s certainly better than being landless and homeless, I agree.”

She decided it was time to take her leave. “You’ve both been most helpful,” she said. She exited through the cacophony to the rear doors and back into the fresh air.

The back parking area was much like the front: big lots with high light standards. In the intervening fifteen minutes, night had fallen and the lamps cast giant pools of warm light over the asphalt. She wondered how much light there had been in the back of Eagle Smoke and Souvenir. Because here, there were dark zones where the circles of light did not meet. Perhaps something untoward could happen in scraps of darkness that would not be seen by others. Clearly it was time to pay a visit on her own to the smoke shop. There was nothing in the QBPS report that mentioned the presence of surveillance cameras, but maybe there was some footage of
something
. If she owned a smoke shop on the main road in the middle of an Indian reserve, she’d have surveillance cameras. Hazel walked
quickly toward the rear of the property and stood at the edge of the lot. There was no one parked this far away from the casino. Who would bother? Beyond her was a riot of trees and scrub, the same forest that surrounded everything down here, including the smoke shop’s parking lot. Plenty of places for hives – no mystery why the cause of death had been so easy to settle on. She leaned her body in toward the trees and listened and thought, for a moment, she could hear a distant buzzing. Then, suddenly, she did, and it was coming from very close to her body. She startled back two huge steps and then slumped. It was her radio vibrating on her hip. She unhooked it. “Micallef,” she barked.

“Hazel? It’s James. Where are you?”

“I’m at the Five Nations Casino. Haven’t you left yet?”

“I didn’t get a chance. Something’s happened to Cathy Wiest …”

] 9 [

It took her thirty minutes to get to the emergency clinic in Kehoe Glenn. Wingate was waiting for her when she arrived.

“Have you seen her? Is she okay?”

“She’s okay,” he said quickly. They went down a short hallway. “She’s in a room now.”

“So it
was
a Taser?”

“I don’t know. The paramedic said she had two puncture wounds in her chest.”

“Just punctures?”

“Like the ones on her husband.”

“Oh man,” Hazel said. “What the hell is going on here? Have you been able to talk to her?”

“Not yet. I’ve told you everything I know.” He opened a door and Cathy Wiest was sitting up in a hospital bed with a white bandage wrapped around her skull.

Hazel turned in the doorway. “Everything?”

“Sorry,” he said. “And she was hit over the head with a rock or something.”

“Good lord.” Hazel dragged a chair around to the side of the bed. “How are you feeling, Cathy?”

“Oh, my head is just killing me.”

“She has to stay overnight for the concussion watch.”

“What happened?” Hazel asked.

“I woke up in the bathroom. There was blood all over my blouse. And the door was closed …”

“You told the paramedics it was a girl who attacked you? Did you know her?”

“No.”

“Do you think Henry knew her?”

“I guess he must have.” Her voice was faint and querulous. “She killed him … didn’t she? With that … gun.”

“I don’t know, Cathy. Tell me, did you see the gun?”

“No. It happened very quickly.”

“Did wires shoot out of it? Did you see any wires?”

“I don’t know. She was standing there and next thing, I woke up in the bathroom.” Her eyes landed on Hazel’s and they were empty and haunted now. “You knew something, didn’t you? That’s why you wanted a second autopsy.”

“I didn’t know anything, Cathy, honestly.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I just … I was doing my job. I didn’t think I was right, but I had to look into it.”

“Well, I guess you were right.” Hazel put her hand in Cathy’s. Cathy grasped it.

“Can you describe her?”

“She was dirty. Like she’d been crawling through fields.”

“How old was she?”

“Young. Twenty. Twenty-two. She had an accent.”

“What kind of accent?”

“I’m not sure. She didn’t say very much. Maybe Swedish. Or German. Her eyes were like an animal’s, like a raccoon in the street.”

“Do you know how long you were in the bathroom?”

“Over an hour. I woke up, I don’t know how long after she hit me, and she was still in the house … I heard her on the floor above. So I stayed where I was. She was throwing things around. And then she left and I stayed in the bathroom for another half-hour before I came out.”

“Did you go upstairs?”

“I stayed in the kitchen.”

Wingate had gone out and now he returned with a doctor in a white smock. “I’m Dr. Morton,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“I want you to discharge Mrs. Wiest.”

“Oh,” he said. “She needs to stay under observation. She took quite a conk on her noggin.”

“This woman is in danger of more than a concussion, Doctor. I’ll keep her safe. But if the person who did this to
her is still in the area, you could have a situation on your hands here.”

“Couldn’t you leave an officer with us? Or a couple?”

She thought about that for a moment. Then decided against it. “I don’t think so.”

Morton directed his attention to his patient. “Are you comfortable with this, Cathy?”

“Where am I going?” she asked Hazel.

“My house.”

Cathy Wiest gave her doctor a searching look. He said it was up to her.

“You’ll take Mrs. Wiest out to my house in Pember Lake and stay with her, please, Detective Constable Wingate?”

“Absolutely.”

“Cathy, this is the key,” she said, decoupling one-half of her keychain from the other. “My mother is there. You remember Mayor Micallef?”

“Yes.”

“That’s who it is, only she’s even more difficult now. Just go on in with James and there’s a guestroom on the second floor. Take a bath if you like, and try to rest. James’ll wake you every couple of hours if you fall asleep to make sure you’re okay.”

“All right,” said Cathy, and now that everything had been arranged and there was nothing else to do, the energy drained from her body and the remaining colour vanished from her face.

“And do I have permission to enter your house?” Hazel asked her.

“Oh. Yes, of course.”

Dr. Morton left to process her discharge and Cathy got gingerly out of the bed. Wingate left again to give her some privacy while she dressed.

Hazel helped her get changed. “What did he do?” Cathy mumbled, as if to herself, and Hazel held the woman by the arm to allow her to get into her pants.

“We don’t know anything yet, Cathy. Nothing. But we’re going to work it out. I promise you.” She got Cathy her shoes. “If I could get a sketch artist into the detachment in the next fifteen minutes or so …”

“I don’t know how much I remember …”

“Do you want to try? Before James takes you to my place?”

She raised her eyes to Hazel. “Okay.”

She got Cathy’s keys and put her into the car with Wingate. She told him to put Melanie on the sketch artist and get him in quickly to get a rendering of the girl. Then she drove out to the Wiest house and parked on the street in front of it. Its windows were completely dark except for a glow emanating through the windows on either side of the front door. It sat, a dark silhouette under the half-moon, on its patch of land and seemed totally devoid of life.