The Shaman's Knife (29 page)

“He offered me money, drink, drugs. Dennissie knew about that, but he was afraid of what Davidee might do to me or to him, so managed to deal with him the way he did, by paying him something, by promising to bring in liquor and give it to Davidee, I think even last week once giving him some cocaine that someone had given him as payment for a loan.

“Davidee knew from somewhere about girls sometimes going to Dennissie's place. On the night of the murders, Dennissie and I met and went to his room. He was very upset and told me Davidee had offered him money if he would get me to his room that night and then let Davidee come in.

“It was maybe the first time Dennissie had refused him, stood up to him entirely, I do not know, but soon after we got to his room, there was a knock on the door—the bedroom door!”

She sobbed, then controlled it, wiped her eyes and after a minute or two went on.

“Davidee must have got in and up the stairs without knocking on the outside door. They began to argue and then Davidee hit him and Dennissie hit him back, knocking him down . . . I was scared and ran down the stairs and out of there and came home.”

“Crying,” her mother put in.

“Yes, I was crying,” Leah said. “I cried more when I found out what had happened. I wished I had stayed and died with him if I had to.”

It was difficult to gather my thoughts as I walked back toward the rec hall. Certainly Leah had provided almost all the evidence I needed that Davidee had been in the house that night. Added to Debbie's, it should be enough to convict, even without a weapon being found.

I thought of Davidee beating and stabbing Dennissie to death and then, on his way down the stairs, perhaps hearing a noise, a groan, a question, from where Thelma was lying in the dark before the television set. Then the terrible battle between a strong young man and a strong but aged woman.

The question then was a fairly simple one. Do I arrest Davidee now, or do I wait just a little, maybe a few more hours, tell Andy what Leah had told me, get Andy's story. Because as close as it now was to being a locked-up case, there was more, and only Andy and Davidee knew what that more was. And maybe Maisie.

I found her alone in the kitchen of the hotel adding potatoes and onions and carrots to a pot roast that was simmering on the stove. Erika must have been out, maybe still looking for me. “Mother's out,” Maisie said. “She said she was going for a walk with Erika and to do the shopping. She'll be back for dinner soon, though.” I was glad both Margaret and Erika were out, lessening possible complications.

“It's you I want to talk to,” I said. “You told me that you were only at Dennissie's house the once. We've found some footprints, not bloody, that are your size, eight. By picking up all your boots, which we'll do if we have to, we could be more sure. The floor was pretty clean before all the blood arrived, so they probably were made before the murders, maybe that very night. Now tell me straight.”

She stared at me wordlessly, but her eyes looked stricken, near tears.

“Don't you cry!” I ordered. “You're a big girl now. Tell me exactly. What were you doing there? And when?”

She sat suddenly in one of the kitchen chairs, but when she spoke she seemed calmer. “It's so degrading, makes me look like such a fool! But I'll tell you. I was attracted to Dennissie, as you know. I thought about it all the time, day and night, worse at night. I kept thinking, if he wants me and I want him, why don't I? That night a little after ten I made up my mind. I said I was going to the rec hall, but I went straight to Dennissie's place. The front door was unlocked, as it had been the first time I was there. I could see Thelma asleep in front of the TV. I tiptoed to the bottom of the stairs and was just starting up when I heard some sounds from above, low sounds, but the house was so quiet I could make out the voices. One was Dennissie's and the other, I was sure, Leah's. I felt like such a fool! I could have let him know I was coming, and maybe he would have waited. But I hadn't and he hadn't. I just tiptoed back through the hall and out of the door and ran all the way home.”

I believed her. Everything, including Leah's story, fitted.

When I left the hotel and reached the rec hall, Debbie had finished her chores and was heading away from the brightly lighted area near the front doors. It was still a few hours from party time. “Going home to eat and feed Julie and change,” she said, seeming happy at the prospect. “Byron can do a lot of things, but feeding the baby is something I like to do myself.”

“Anything going on here since I left?” I asked.

“Not a thing, thanks be to God or the shaman,” she joked. “Hope they can both keep it that way through the night.”

We were standing just outside of the doors at the entrance. Glancing over her shoulder, I saw Bouvier approaching in the van. He got out hurriedly, definitely excited. I looked past him into the van. No Andy. I'd left them together at Barker's house with instructions to stay there unless there was an emergency.

Apparently this was the emergency. Bouvier signaled to me with a jerk of his head. When I went over he said, “Andy has something he wants to talk about. To you. Nobody else.”

 

As far as I could learn later, Andy had felt oppressively penned up and ill at ease in Barker's house. The house itself was all strange to him. He'd never been in one before with big chairs and television and a telephone. He was forbidden to answer this phone, and he heard Bouvier having conversations on it in which he sometimes pretended to be answering from the detachment. Through the long day he'd been unable to think through what he knew and what he was strongly tempted to tell me. Against his desire to talk, the thought of being hunted down by Davidee terrified him. I think I know how he felt. Once in a dream long ago (and sometimes since) I was a fox and had stepped into a leg trap that had not snapped shut but was closing in slow motion. Andy knew that one way or another his life was in danger because of what he knew, and that it would be even more in danger if he told and Davidee, still free, knew he had told.

He also felt that he knew safer and more familiar hiding places than Barker's house, places where he could think through what he should do and then either find me and tell his story, taking his chances of Davidee finding out, or go to the hiding place under the boat that he felt no one else knew, except me, convinced that when the time came I'd look for him there.

Sometime during the day he had decided he had to get out. He tried to convince Bouvier that he felt okay and could be left alone, but I had told Bouvier to stay with him, so he did. By that time Andy knew that I was not easily available by telephone. Bouvier had tried the detachment a couple of times on the buzzer system we had between the two extensions, and had got no answer.

Which is what gave Andy his plan. He waited for a time when Bouvier buzzed the office and got no answer. He didn't want to go out and chance meeting Davidee or someone who might tell Davidee, but he knew he'd have to take the chance when it came. As it happened, Erika Hall phoned from the hotel and gave Bouvier a hard time about not being able to find me. Bouvier buzzed the detachment. No answer. Andy saw his chance. He told Bouvier he had something important to tell me about the murders. Right away! He wanted to talk! “But only to Matteesie. Find Matteesie!”

My part of this I thought out after Bouvier and I hurried to the house and, as I'd half expected, found it empty and Andy gone. Bouvier did not curse or swear at being tricked.

“Damn that kid anyway,” was all he said, shaking his head. He knew a good con when he saw it.

“Think of it this way,” I said, “if he was your fifteen-year-old in this kind of a fix you'd be pulling for him.”

Bouvier, as if he'd been thinking along those lines too, said, “I better look for him.” He noticed that I had not suggested calling out the Inumerit, Neighborhood Watchers, reinforcements from Cambridge or Spence, or indeed doing anything he couldn't do by himself. “I'll just cruise the streets, up to the airport, along by number five, and around.”

“Not to the boat,” I said. That would be mine, if needed. He nodded, understanding. “If I find him, what?”

“Try to talk to him. If he doesn't run, bring him here to Barker's again. If he runs, let him go. Think of all those hungry mouths you've got to feed and that maybe when you're running after him, you'll get hurt or have a heart attack.”

I didn't have to ponder what to do next. At least as important as finding Andy was the gang-up plan on Davidee. What Debbie had told me had a strong ring of truth, or at least of intent. It might happen any time. I wanted to be there when it did.

While Bouvier looked for Andy, taking the van, I went back to the rec hall, where a crowd was gathering around the entrance. I stopped on the fringes. In Sanirarsipaaq or any other small settlement in the Arctic, nobody hangs around home waiting for the fashionable time to show up. Byron, Paulessie, and Tommy went by me, nodding but not speaking. They looked much more resolute than just three young guys heading for a good time. Also, I got a whiff of them. It was booze day. They'd been drinking.

Then I got a whiff of something else. Davidee's father, the chronically forlorn Ipeelee, was walking downhill toward the rec hall—but not at his usual gait of slouching aimlessly along, eyes down, dragging each foot with every step. He was striding out, head up, turning his head from side to side, obviously searching. Then off to my left I first heard and soon saw Davidee's yellow snowmobile coming at speed from the direction of the townhouses. As he neared and slowed, his eyes were searching the clumps of people; I figured he'd be looking for Andy.

Ipeelee must have seen Davidee at the same time. He headed to intercept, holding up one hand, palm out. Davidee kept going. Ipeelee called out a few words and then stepped right in front of the snowmobile. Snowmobiles do not steer well on ice or hard-packed snow. Two or three people yelled, “Ipeelee! Look out!” Davidee had the choice of running down his father or jamming on the brakes. He came to a skidding stop, the forward tip of one ski touching Ipeelee's boot. Ipeelee did not flinch. People who had stopped in alarm shook their heads and kept on toward the rec hall, muttering about Ipeelee being soft in the head.

I had moved close to look at Ipeelee and hear Davidee, in effect, calling this apparently chance meeting to order, his opening remarks being, “You stupid old fucker, what do you think you're doing?” After that, for some reason he calmed down. Maybe in that instant he really looked into Ipeelee's race and saw what I was close enough to see and recognize: the look of a pushed-around human being who has had enough. I didn't move. I was afraid to break what bore some resemblance to a spell. For a moment, the three of us were in what had become a quiet and private space. Then Ipeelee unhurriedly took from his side pocket something small, wrapped in ordinary brown paper, and stepped to Davidee's side, holding it out.

“You gave this to me,” he said. “I give it back to you.”

Davidee's face reflected not anger but shock and fear. Then he saw me nearby and I assume he figured he could handle the situation better without me. He ignored the proffered parcel and suddenly revved the snowmobile while wrenching the handlebars into a left turn. As the machine began to move Ipeelee, with a cry, grabbed Davidee's arm with both hands, wrenched at him. He was the angry one now. As if the years of shame and bottled-up rage fueled his strength, he yanked Davidee's hand off the throttle and the machine stopped. As Davidee struggled to regain his balance, Ipeelee reached over and stuffed his small parcel into the space between Davidee's legs, then abruptly turned and headed for the rec hall.

Hell of a good idea, Ipeelee, I thought. Safer for you in there than out here. Falling in beside him as Davidee zoomed past us to park by the rec hall door, I said conversationally, “What was it you gave to Davidee?”

“Ask him,” Ipeelee said, without looking at me.

When I looked at Davidee he was hastily tucking into an inside pocket the parcel Ipeelee had given him.

“Goddamn it!” I yelled. I'd had enough crap. I yanked Ipeelee's arm around so that he was facing me. Davidee had gone inside, glaring at us. “I'm not the one who made your life miserable all these years!” I said. “Three people dead and every way I turn nobody wants to talk!” I was tempted to add, “Even Sedna!” but that would have been hearsay, from Debbie, and Sedna is not a name to be taken in vain. “For God's sake!” I said. “Maybe it means nothing, the parcel, but it seemed important. What was it?”

Maybe it was my tone that caught his attention. Or maybe what he said to me then was just another step in his emancipation. As he said it, my immediate thought was for his short-term safety. The long term we should be able to look after.

“What I gave him and what he now has,” Ipeelee said, “is the shaman's knife.”

Walking a few feet behind him, I made my way slowly through the crowd. It was, after all, just a knife. We could have forensics check it out as the possible murder weapon, but after that, what? The course it had followed from Jonassie's shelf through who knew how many hands to land in Ipeelee's, who could tell? Ipeelee had said, handing over the parcel, “You gave this to me, I give it back to you.”

Maybe its main provable importance right now was that its presence in the house somehow, supernaturally or otherwise, had caused Jonassie to abort his attempt to banish Ipeelee's suicidal depression. However, as important as that must seem in the family, him threatening suicide had to be strictly a side issue to the murders, in which any knife could have been used. Most important was to find whoever had wielded it.

If forensics cleared this particular knife of involvement in the murders, it simply would return to its previous state, an interesting artifact—which, I suddenly thought, I might buy if it was for sale. Why not?

Maybe it was due to the days of pressure, but in that crowd in the rec hall, with people eyeing me and no doubt wondering what I knew that they didn't know about the big murder case, my mind suddenly drifted into fantasy. Maybe I needed the therapy. Anyway, I thought,
that
knife, if it really was
that
knife, like Ipeelee said, could be my souvenir of Sanirarsipaaq! Wow! It could sit unobtrusively on my desk in Ottawa until someone on a tour, like a senator or something, or maybe the queen, after all she travels a lot, would pick it up and remark on the beautiful gyrfalcon handle, and I would go over to the fireplace, surely I would have a fireplace in my office by then, and lean my elbow on the mantel (I'd have to order a low mantel, or I'd look ridiculous), and say, “Well, Your Majesty, there's a story that goes with that knife . . .”

I'm afraid that at that point I was smiling. Anyway, when I suddenly came to my senses everybody was smiling back at me. Everyone who caught my eye nodded. But I conceded reluctantly that this had nothing to do with my daydream. They always preferred a smile to a frown—and also they were getting used to me. To most natives, even when we were being tough, police were more dependable, even essential, than politicians, lawyers, spouses, and some employers. The smiles persisted.

I stopped by Jane and Lewissie Ullayoroluk, who had settled in two of the chairs along the wall and were sipping coffee from paper cups. Lewissie would be the master of ceremonies when things started rolling. Jane would play the piano for “0 Canada,” the national anthem.

I thought of telling them what had happened, the strange Ipeelee-Davidee encounter, the possibility that the small mystery of the shaman's knife would be solved, but hesitated.

“Davidee was here a few minutes ago but then left,” Lewissie said casually. “Probably gone to get his tapes.”

Davidee gone again? In my head, an alarm bell. “You haven't seen Andy around, have you?” I asked.

Lewissie's eyes showed surprise. “I was going to ask you. Last I heard about him, he was with you.”

“He was, but he got away.”

Lewissie made one of those mild grimaces sometimes seen when the half-expected actually happens. Should I go after Davidee? I decided not yet. If he didn't come back soon, I would.

Now the hall was full. Nearly the whole settlement had turned out. Maybe two hundred people milled around expectantly, from round-eyed and alert babies in their mothers'
amautiks
to elders who hobbled or were helped to chairs. There are ritualistic aspects to such a gathering. The older people and the pregnant and some young mothers congregate along the walls, filling the chairs. Some shed their outer clothing onto wall hooks or into a pile in a corner, some don't. Now some were lining up at the free coffee and tea table. Younger ones were putting coins into the soft-drink machine, the heavy clunks of dropping drinks sounding like a warm-up to the drum dance. Young girls chattered in little groups.

Among them I saw Sarah, Agnes, and Maisie. Leah was standing in a human traffic jam with her mother. Both waved at me and smiled, causing me to reflect like the goody-goody I really am that confession is good for the soul. I banished the mildly uncharitable thought that they'd known I would catch up eventually. Copping a plea usually gets a person a break in court. I could only guess at what Leah had not been able to tell me, because she didn't know about it, questions to which there was maybe no answer. Why had Andy screamed her name in his nightmare? I wondered—a strange thought—if ragged little Andy had one of those adolescent crushes on Leah such as sometimes a young boy gets for an older girl.

Erika Hall looked daggers at me from across the room, where she was now moving in on Sarah and Agnes. That's another thing she probably had picked up, that I'd questioned them along with Leah. Erika would be trying the all-girls-together line, which she was almost as good at as she was at getting men to talk; both were effective journalistic skills when wielded by a woman with what one might call the right stuff.

Then, with some relief, I saw Davidee enter, standing well back and looking at the crowd, holding his tape-deck and a coil of wire. I wished I could read his thoughts.

The clock on the wall ticked over to nine. Lewissie walked across to the microphone at one end of the room, ritualistically blew into it, welcomed everybody, and announced that the evening would begin with the throat singers.

They moved together to the microphone a little shyly, three traditionally dressed women approaching middle age. Immediately the room was full of the remarkable sound that only throat singers can produce. The sounds are melodic to those accustomed to throat singing, a blending of moans and phrasing and gestures as old as our people's history. They finished to complimentary handclapping and a few whistles from younger listeners.

The form of the program had been to get the traditional concert items out of the way first. A fit-looking young man whom Lewissie introduced as a gold medalist from the recent Arctic Winter Games performed one of his specialties, the knuckle hop. With only his knuckles and the toes of his white rubber-soled athletic shoes touching the floor, he made mighty hops around the cleared part of the floor three times before collapsing comically to lie still for a few seconds then spring to his feet to take his bows.