The Devil's Dust (22 page)

“We were talking about business,” the older man says. “My name is Peter Whitehorse and this is David. We're from Big Water First Nation.”

McKelvey recognizes the name. The man is Chief of the Big Water.

“McKelvey,” he says, and removes the glove from his hand and holds it out. Whitehorse looks at the hand for a moment and then shakes. McKelvey offers his hand but the younger man won't take it.

“This is what we get for trusting the white man,” David says. “Centuries of lies and betrayals and again we learn the hard way.”

Whitehorse looks at David, simply looks at him, and the younger man takes a step back and leans against the front of the SUV. There is more to say, but he simmers in his anger.

“I am disgraced in front of my people,” Whitehorse says.

David looks down at his feet and kicks at the snow. It obviously pains him to hear the older man speak this way.

“Levesque is a partner with you in a land deal for a casino, is that right?” McKelvey says. “I've heard about it around town, and from the mayor, Danny Marko.”

“We gave the man our money and our good faith. Our lawyers conducted the title searches yesterday. His paperwork is all forged. Levesque doesn't have the rights to the land, just the dwellings. The town owns the land.”

David can't help himself, and he lifts his head and says, “And Mayor Danny Marko doesn't want to sell the land to us, he wants to hold the property for the day when the power workers come to work on the transmission line. The payout for the line access will be double what they'd get from us.”

“If you have the proof, Levesque can be charged with any number of crimes,” McKelvey says. “Fraud, forgery, misrepresentation. I'd need copies of the paperwork he supplied to you, and the contract you both signed, a copy of the cheque you gave him.”

Whitehorse nods, but his eyes search McKelvey, and McKelvey feels held there in his place. This man owns a power that is quiet and still, requiring of few words.

“I don't know you,” Whitehorse says. “Why should I trust you?”

“I'm a man of my word. And wrong is wrong.”

Again Whitehorse looks at McKelvey, and he blinks. The day is changing from a dull light to a strong sun, and now Whitehorse squints.

“You know,” he says, “my uncle was killed here in the mine strike in the 1950s, and when nobody was charged with the killing, my family swore we would never set foot in this town again …”

McKelvey feels his legs begin to buckle, and he consciously focuses on remaining upright. His mind swirls with the implications of the connection, the reach through years and generations. These two men, strangers, standing face to face on the side of the road. The secrets of their ancestors there in the air between them.

“But time passes and people forget,” Whitehorse continues. “Or they don't forget, but they need something at the store that they don't have. So they ride back into town. And they feel a little sick, maybe, like they are betraying their family, like they are keeping a secret, but it gets easier the next time.”

David has found his cigarettes in his jacket and he lights one. McKelvey finds his eyes drawn to the first curl of smoking dancing like a northern light as the strong smell of sulphur from a match reaches his nose and he breathes it in.

“We thought we could make a deal that would benefit both of our people,” Whitehorse says. “But like my uncle before me, I trusted the wrong man.”

“I'll help you get your money back and put Levesque away,” McKelvey says.

“He should leave town before something bad happens to him,” David says, and spits on the frozen ground.

Whitehorse regards the younger man and nods. He turns back to McKelvey.

“In there,” Whitehorse says, and points to the Station Hotel tavern. “Tonight at seven. I'll bring my papers and we'll see what your word is worth.”

“Uncle,” David says. “Let me take care of this, please. This is between Big Water and Carl Levesque.”

But Whitehorse simply turns and lays his hand on the younger man's shoulder and then gets into the passenger side of the SUV. David passes McKelvey on his way to the driver's side.

“You let my uncle down, you'll pay.”

“I believe that,” McKelvey says, and holds the icy stare.

David closes the door and backs the vehicle up so that he can use the entrance to the Station parking lot to turn around. McKelvey stands in the middle of the road, watching the vehicle drive away. He looks up at the sky. It its cloudless now, wiped clean.

M
inister Harvey reads Psalm 23 and then invites Douglas Watson, the dead boy's uncle, to share a few words. The room grows quiet and still as the uncle collects himself at the podium. He begins with a story about Mark learning to use the potty, how proud and independent the boy was, and how he carried the thing around like it was a porta-potty. Madsen feels a lump forming in her throat, and she knows this is the precursor. She will begin to cry momentarily, silent tears that well and then flow. She is not a mother, but believes she understands something of loss, having tried for so many years. At first you listen to the doctors when they say everyone is made differently, everyone has a unique cycle, you just need to be patient. And then you explore the emerging technologies with a newfound sense of hope, and you spend a fortune on consultations and for experts to poke and prod. And then the hope turns against itself as you watch your friends and family members bring new life into their homes, and you stand by and you smile and pretend to be happy for them. The arguments lead to blame, and the blame leads to silence. And eventually, you run aground with the realization that this is it, this is your life as it is and always will be. There is no more to come.

“Mark collected things like it was his full-time job,” the uncle says, smiling at his memories, enjoying the smile that feels so good against the pain and the tears of the last few days. “It was marbles and then it was bottle caps. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had kept them in a box or something. I still remember walking on those bottle caps in my sock feet.”

Madsen tastes the salt of her tears, she wipes at her cheeks and takes a deep breath. That's it, all she will allow. She is a professional here, an outsider, and she has a job to finish. She composes herself as the service concludes with a prayer by Minister Harvey. She sees Nolan moving to cover Celluci as they had planned. She slips outside and watches the people talking at their cars, sharing their grief, and she hears them as they pass by sharing their own vision of what is happening to Saint B, and who is to blame. The rumours and accusations run the gamut. The truth is, everyone is scared.

Madsen's eyes stop on a middle-aged man fishing for keys at a white pickup truck with a sign that says
CO-OP
on the door. She cuts a straight line across the crunchy, snow-packed parking lot.

McKelvey opens the door to his former home and finds a legal-size envelope propped between the screen and front doors. He picks it up and reads it, believing it is yet another missive from Carl Levesque regarding some new extrapolation of the Landlord-Tenant Act. There is a note scrawled across the envelope in a beautiful hand script that you hardly ever see anymore.

Charlie McKelvey,

Everything you want to know is in here.

Do what you've got to do. I'm too old to care about consequences.

George Fergus

McKelvey handles the package like a kid trying to squeeze clues from a wrapped Christmas present. It contains papers. The envelope is sealed. His heart palpitates, and he feels the sudden need to sit down. These spells seem to be increasing, as though the energy completely runs out of him all at once. He sees himself with a cane, or worse, a four-legged walker, shuffling through Toronto's parks one bench at a time, naming the pigeons.

He sets the envelope on the kitchen table and walks around it, looking at it, as though it could be the results of a medical test he has been anxiously awaiting. He wants to open it and he doesn't want to open it, wants to know and yet doesn't want to know.
Christ
, he thinks,
I just shook hands with the nephew of the man who was killed during the strike
. McKelvey wonders if his father would find this ironic. Then again, Grey McKelvey didn't believe in irony or fate or anything that he couldn't bend or shape with his hands, anything he couldn't see with his own eyes.

The phone rings and McKelvey jumps.

“Shirley Murdoch has been trying to reach you on the radio,” Madsen says.

“I stopped in at home.”

“I interviewed Gerry Kilrea, owner of the Co-op. I sat in his truck at the community centre after the memorial. He said his place was robbed back in early December.”

“Let me guess,” McKelvey says.

“That's right. Four gallons of anhydrous ammonia was among the missing inventory. Farmers use it as a nitrogen fertilizer, inject it into the ground. The thief took a couple of industrial-grade steel buckets, too, and a pair of leather work gloves. Nothing else.”

“I'm assuming he filed a police report so he could make an insurance claim.”

“This stuff is classified as ‘Dangerous Goods.' And he was worried that if he made a claim the occupational health and safety folks would come down hard on him for not keeping it locked up the way he should have. Small town, he said he got too comfortable. But he did call the police to let them know this stuff was out there.”

“Who responded?”

“Constable Pete Younger.”

“Well, well …”

“Another interesting piece of information — I was asking Mr. Kilrea about what's been going on around town, the meth and the death of Wade Garson, whether he had any insights. He said Chief Gallagher was out one day trying to get Kilrea onside for this landfill site idea, and he had Celluci with him. He said Gallagher stopped at a barrel of fertilizer, tapped it and said, ‘this is all you need to make your case, boys, or get rid of pesky varmints.' He said it was what the Oklahoma City bomber used in the back of that rental truck.”

“The report on the explosion at Wade Garson's indicated the presence of a foreign accelerant,” McKelvey says. “Too bad we didn't have a full forensics team up here. The fire marshal doubles as the town cobbler, I think.”

“This is a mess, but there's something coming into focus here. I just spoke with Nolan and he spent some time with Mark Watson's family, since the Chief isn't around. Now he's tailing Celluci. He's ready to roll in as soon as I can get that paperwork sent in to the circuit Justice for an arrest warrant. I need to make some calls to my HQ. The weather's cleared, so they should be able to get off their asses and send us some help. I also need to finish a long conversation with my husband.”

“I'll look at the shop for a copy of the report of the Co-op theft.… And the last I heard, this Younger kid had been upgraded to stable condition. Maybe I can get him on the phone at the hospital.”

“Sounds like a plan. I'll relieve Nolan when I'm over there. He can run home and check in on his dad.”

“Good luck.”

“Good luck?”

“The phone call home.”

“Prayers,” she says. “Luck just ain't gonna cut it anymore.”

McKelvey hangs up the phone. He stares at the envelope. Finally, he finds an old newspaper and places it on top.

E
d Nolan sits in the lobby of the Station Hotel with an endless cup of coffee supplied by the manager, Duncan, who is simply grateful for the company. He keeps telling Nolan that he'll leave him to his work, but then gets up from behind the front desk and talks about hockey or the service for Mark Watson or the guy from Detroit he knows Nolan is watching.

“Leafs lost again last night,” Duncan says. “I still remember '67 like it was yesterday, boy. The Canadiens and the Leafs, Beliveau and Armstrong. God Almighty, that was when they played
hockey
. If I never see the Leafs win the Stanley Cup again, by God I saw it that night, Eddie.”

Nolan nods. But he is not interested in hockey. He feels nothing when he watches it except for a sense of confusion. Where is the puck, and what are these obscure rules that result in the game stopping and starting every minute and a half? He has never spoken this truth, for he might as well tell everyone in Saint B that he's from another planet. He played hockey when he was a kid because his father made him. Every kid in Saint B played hockey at least for a few years. But he didn't really play. He watched through the grill of the face mask as the other kids moved around the ice. He never understood the plays the coach smeared in grease pencil on the board, arrows and lines and circles. He has that same feeling now, dressed in his uniform and watching the other cops like Madsen and McKelvey make all the plays. He wants so much to shoot and score. So he sits in the lobby of the hotel and he nods and smiles as Duncan complains about Dr. Nichols's failure to diagnose his wife's bowel obstruction, and he waits for the call from Madsen that will allow him to climb the stairs, knock on the door, and arrest Tony Celluci for the murder of Wade Garson.

The little squad room is empty, and McKelvey pauses at the door as he flicks on the lights. If conditions were different, he thinks, if almost everything were different, this would be a great place to finish off your police career. He moves to the four filing cabinets against the wall and searches by date, by report type, marvelling at the variety of calls the force has taken and responded to, from missing cats to sightings of a naked man appearing every night at midnight outside the third-floor bedroom window of a local widow. As he did when he searched for a record of the strike death investigation, he comes up empty. There is no mention of the local Co-op in any police reports from the previous year.

Sitting in the Chief's chair, he calls the Sudbury General Hospital and gets patched through to Constable Younger's room. The young man is groggy and dry-throated. McKelvey asks about his condition and brings the man up to speed on the turn of events, the basics of where they sit with the investigation, which seems like a whole lot of roads leading nowhere.

McKelvey asks him about the theft at the Co-op. “Some dangerous materials were stolen. A base ingredient in the manufacture of meth. You responded to the call by the owner, Gerry Kilrea, correct?”

Background sounds of the hospital fill the line.

“I remember that, sure. It was early December. I turned the report over to Nolan. I thought it was probably a bunch of kids who didn't even know what they stole. Once Mr. Kilrea told us how caustic that stuff is, I worried about the kids burning themselves more than anything.”

“Nothing ever came of the report?”

“Figured Nolan and the Chief poked around on it, I guess.”

McKelvey makes a few notes.

“What do you know about Tony Celluci and your Chief?”

“Celluci? I know he's a good shot for one thing. Took him and Gallagher out to the woods near Wade Garson's place to target shoot about two days before the trailer blew. I think Celluci wanted to intimidate Garson. We set up bottles on some barrels and they shot about a dozen rounds a piece, I'd say. They were getting real chummy together, always talking about landfills like it was exciting stuff.”

McKelvey makes more notes and circles a few words for emphasis. The target shooting story has now been corroborated. Things have just grown more rather than less complicated.

“Tell me about the explosion and the fire,” McKelvey says.

And Younger repeats, almost verbatim to his original statement, how he was on patrol out on the highway at the edge of town and saw flames shoot above the treeline just before eleven. He responded to the scene and attempted to gain entry to the trailer, unsure whether Garson or anyone else was inside. The trailer exploded. The trucker passing by placed a call to 911 at that time.

“It was like everything got right quiet for a split second, like something was taking a deep breath, and then the whole world ripped apart. I was blown back into the yard. I was out for a little while and then Nolan was leaning down and blowing air into my mouth. Next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital. Wrapped up like a mummy. Guess I got burned up pretty good. I haven't seen myself yet …”

They talk for a little while, Younger asking about where his Chief has gotten to and what they are doing to find him, and McKelvey hears in the young man's voice the confusion and anger that every cop feels when he has been injured and removed from the field. Younger wants to be in Ste. Bernadette right now. He feels useless in the hospital bed. McKelvey understands the notion, and knows also where it can lead a man. Younger's voice has grown tired and he yawns.

“You'll need to talk to somebody about all of this,” McKelvey says.

McKelvey can almost hear the man rolling his eyes. He is too young, too strong, and too invincible to need help with his feelings about what has happened to his town, to his own police department.

“Tell Nolan thanks for me,” he says. “Doctor said he saved my life.”

“I'll tell him, Pete,” McKelvey says.