A Door in the River Read online

  Both of them had been fixtures in the town. Cathy had sat on town council. If someone was having a party in Kehoe Glenn, there was a good chance they were at it. Henry had been fun to know. A party they’d had once at the house in Pember Lake had gone so late he’d fallen asleep on the couch with a blanket over his head. They’d left him there until noon the next day, tiptoeing around, and then decided to wake him. But when they pulled the blanket back there was a pile of pillows under it and a note that read, Keep it down, please.

  She was going to miss him.

  When people began to leave (and when the vittles began to dwindle), Hazel went up to Cathy a second time, to say goodbye. “There were a lot of people here,” she said. “He was well loved.”

  “Thank you for coming, Hazel. You know it was your father’s generation that set the example for Hank, once he was ready to come around to it. His dad, yours, all those nice old guys who used to curl together at the bonspiel … they were the template. I wonder what this place is going to be like when their influence is finally gone.”

  “Well, it’s up to us to keep it alive. Henry was the best example of it, though.”

  Cathy half smiled at Hazel. “Thank you for saying that.”

  Hazel gave the mourning woman a huge hug. Then, gently, she said, “Do you mind if I ask you something, Cathy?”

  “Like what?” Hazel’s tone had put her on alert.

  “I’m just wondering if Henry smoked.”

  “Oh, he quit years ago. But he bought the occasional pack. I sometimes found them.”

  “Do you think he would have gone down to Queesik Bay to buy a pack of cigarettes?”

  “Hazel …”

  “I know,” she said, “Sorry. Force of habit.”

  She squeezed Hazel’s hand and turned her reddened face to the next well-wisher. Hazel went back to her car. She drove home with the radio off, thinking. Why had Henry Wiest parked far in the back of the smoke shop? There was a drive-through there if he’d wanted to be subtle about it. But he’d parked. So maybe he hadn’t gone for smokes. She sincerely doubted that he’d gone for souvenirs, either.

  ] 2 [

  Late afternoon

  Things were changing at the Port Dundas Police Department. Years of talk about amalgamating some of the region’s smaller shops was turning into a reality, and the Port Dundas detachment was about to experience that in the form of Ray Greene returning to his old shop as the new commanding officer. Supposedly this was the beginning of a renaissance for Port Dundas: the detachment was going to grow, become more central to Westmuir operations. She wondered what Ray was going to be called. Probably superintendent. It made her skin itch to think of it. He’d been gone for almost a year, after quitting the force over Hazel’s methods, as his CO, and now he was coming back, not as her deputy but her boss. Ray himself had informed Hazel of Commissioner Willan’s decision in person back in May: he was going to be installed in January. So she had five months, five more months to do things her way.

  After the gathering at the Wiest house, she called down to Queesik Bay to get a copy of the band police report on the discovery of the body, and a copy of the autopsy. The report was faxed up from the reserve police department. It was detailed and unprovocative. Under the details of time and place, the reporting officer, a Lydia Bellecourt, had written:

  I responded to the location at 12:35 a.m. in regards to a report of a body in the rear of the parking lot behind Eagle Smoke and Souvenir. Upon arrival at the time noted above, a customer of Eagle Smoke and Souvenir, full name LOUIS PETER HARKEMAS, directed me to the location of the body, which he first saw when he was parking his car and his headlights illuminated it. He reassured me that no one had touched or moved the body from when he first saw it. The victim was found lying on his back, on the gravel of the rear parking lot, between a red, 2003 Ford F-150 pickup with the licence plate AAZW 229, and a grey 1997 Volkswagen Jetta with no plates. The victim was dressed in jeans, a blue shirt, and was wearing black Blundstone boots. The victim had vomited.

  I ascertained that the victim was not breathing and did not have a pulse, whereupon I radioed QBAS to state that the victim appeared to be deceased and that in addition to life-saving equipment that had already been dispatched, a coroner would be needed. The ambulance arrived on the scene at 12:41 a.m. and pronounced the victim dead. The coroner, CALVIN BRETT, arrived shortly afterwards and did his own exam and wrote his report on the scene (#38174490). He estimated the time of death at between 11 p.m. and midnight. A driver’s licence and an Ontario Health Card confirmed the victim’s identity as HENRY PHILLIP WIEST, of 72 Church Road in Kehoe Glenn, Ontario. DOB June 11, 1959. Contents of the victim’s pockets were a wallet with $45 in cash, a cellphone, and a comb. All items were bagged. There was no damage to the victim’s vehicle, and there was nothing of interest in the truck except for a load of home furnace filters, and a half-drunk Tim Hortons coffee in a cup-holder. There were no personal belongings in the truck except for a folded blanket. Papers confirming victim’s ownership of the truck were found in the glove compartment. The victim’s last name is also painted on the side of the truck and refers to a well-known business in Kehoe Glenn, Wiest’s.

  There appear to be no witnesses to the victim’s death. There was no evidence of a struggle, no blood or bullet wound on the victim, no clear signs of strangulation or blunt force trauma. The victim had his truck keys in his hand. Nothing at the scene suggested foul play; investigation reserved until results of autopsy.

  Signed,

  LYDIA BELLECOURT, RC QBPS

  The band police had sent a car to pick Cathy up and she’d given permission for the autopsy to be performed on the reserve. It had its own lab – Westmuir’s chief pathologist, Dr. Jack Deacon, often just sent his tests there. The report said that Wiest had edema associated with an insect sting causing anaphylaxis and that a single sting to his face had caused his death. The toxicology had come back negative. So that was it. She called James Wingate, her detective constable, into her office and showed him the faxes.

  “It was a wasp,” she said. He was standing in front of her desk, studying the report quickly. She put her finger down on the Cause of Death. It read, Anaphylaxis due to wasp sting. “My luck.”

  “Why your luck?”

  “No stinger. That would be proof of something at least.” She took the police report back and sorted it with the other pages. The cover sheet read, Please let me know if I can be of any further service and was signed by Bellecourt. “Did you ever meet him?”

  “I’ve only been here nine months, Hazel.”

  “You would have met him eventually,” she said. “You’ve probably seen his pickup a dozen times without even knowing it. One day you were going to have trouble with the wiring in your living room, or you were going to find a leak under your sink, and you’d ask someone for a name and that name would have been Henry. Everyone knew him. That’s why there were three hundred people in that church. I bet there were fifty underemployed contractors handing out their cards yesterday.”

  “So he was well liked.”

  “Loved.”

  He continued reading the stapled fax pages and felt backwards for the seat of the chair in front of her desk. “There were no cigarettes in his pickup,” he said. He sat with a faint thud. “So he must have been stung just as he was getting out.”

  “Hey, does it say pickup? It does, doesn’t it? He was driving the store’s pickup.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “It kind of puts the kibosh on the cigarette-buying idea. He’d have gone down in his car.”

  “Why.”

  “Because he’s buying cigarettes on the sly, dummy. You don’t do that in a vehicle with your name painted on the door.”

  “I’m still working on my detectivating skills.”

  “But he must have gone down for a reason, right? If not cigarettes, then what?”

  “Souvenirs.”

  “On his way home with a load of filters?”

>   “Why is the pickup so important to you all of a sudden?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I want to know what he was doing down there. It would help me to know.”

  He leaned over in the chair and slid his copy of the police report back onto her desk. “Why would it help you?”

  “I knew him his whole life, James. But not on a daily basis – right? You see people around. But how well do you really know them?”

  “That is a question for the ages,” he said, tolerantly.

  “What I’m saying is, you don’t really need to know them. Not if things go the way they usually go. You just know what you know. You never have the desire or the occasion to ask if there’s anything you ought to know. But when a guy like this, at his age, and he’s found in a parking lot on an Indian reserve – ”

  “In his pickup truck – ”

  “Right. In his pickup truck.”

  “It brings questions to mind.”

  “It does.”

  “And you knew him,” Wingate said.

  “Yes. I knew him.”

  He smiled at her and she recognized that glimmer of resignation so many of her co-workers already had. Nine months and he was already giving her that smile. “So what do you want to do, Skip?”

  “I wish Jack Deacon could look at him and confirm for me that it was a wasp sting. And that it really was anaphylaxis.”

  “If you have any doubts, you’d better hurry. Isn’t the funeral Thursday?”

  “I know,” she said and she scowled. “I wonder if Cathy’s worried about why he was down there in the pickup. Eleven-thirty on a Saturday night. Who’d need a workman that time of night? We should find out if the souvenir shop sold filters.”

  Wingate got up in front of her desk and retrieved one set of the faxes. “Souvenir filters? Let me handle this, okay? I’ll call Jack Deacon, get his opinion on the reserve hospital and their report.”

  “That’s a good idea. Do that.”

  “Then I’ll call this Officer Bellecourt and see if she thinks there could be any loose ends.”

  “Talk to Jack first.”

  “All right,” he said. “Listen, I’m sorry, Hazel. I didn’t know you knew him like that.”

  “I even babysat him a couple times. My dad drove me down to Kehoe Glenn and came back afterwards to pick me up.”

  “This was just a sad, tragic accident. But I’ll …,” he said, holding the reports in the air.

  “Thank you, James.”

  ______

  The rest of the day passed with no news and minimal disruption. Had Hazel known it was going to be the last such day for some time, she would have made an effort to enjoy it more. But it was hard to enjoy anything, and a dark cloud sagged over her. There were still reports to read, though, there was never any peace, not even on a Monday. She’d had to send Constable Eileen Bail down to the big warehouse clothing store to take a description of a young male shoplifter from the store manager; she had to personally look into reports that primary school kids were smoking cigarettes in the alleyway behind the Beverly Cinema; and she still had to compose an excitement-inducing text for the Port Dundas Annual Main Street BBQ, an event the OPS paid for every Labour Day as a public relations activity. Those who didn’t like it called it a stunt, and it was a stunt, but most people liked it. Sometimes Hazel thought people asked for too little. The person who’d always loved it was Ray Greene. Frankly, sometimes she wished they’d do something different.

  Henry. Henry Wiest was dead. Hazel was pretty confident nothing would come of her thoroughness, but she consoled herself with the thought that Henry would have appreciated it.

  The next morning, Jack’s voice floated up from the speakerphone in Hazel’s office. Wingate took notes. It turned out Deacon had not seen the autopsy report. He’d met Dr. Brett and discussed the case with him, and he’d relayed what he knew to Cathy. But, he said, he hadn’t wanted to assume privileges. So Wingate had faxed the autopsy along with Bellecourt’s report to him and arranged for Wiest’s medical records to be copied down to him in Mayfair as well. “Well, it’s interesting,” he was saying, “I’ve got the report and then I learned there were a couple of photographs as well. They didn’t send you those, now did they?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I decided to call this Bellecourt, and she said there were some pics of the body and the sting wound and she emailed them to me.”

  “You can do that, huh?”

  “Yes, Hazel. Anyway, it’s clear he was stung by something. Actually, twice. A wasp will do that. He was stung once on the face and once on the forehead, but it was hidden by his hairline.”

  “So there’s at least one thing they missed,” Hazel said, leaning over.

  “Not really. The tox screen is clear.”

  “He was forty-six, Jack.”

  “It’s sad, but it doesn’t create doubt about the cause of death for me. There’s quite a bit of pale edema around the facial wound in one of the pictures. It looks like a sting. His prostaglandins and the leukotrines were through the roof, and that’s consistent with anaphylaxis, and pre-existing atherosclerosis is a risk factor in anaphylactic deaths.”

  “English, Jack,” said Hazel.

  “Thickening of the arteries,” he said. “Mr. Wiest probably should have been on a statin since, judging by his medical records, he had hypertension. And, finally Hazel, the bloodwork from the reserve shows elevated levels of the enzyme that gets released when there’s damage to heart muscle. An anaphylactic reaction can cause a heart attack, Hazel, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Okay.”

  “This satisfy you?”

  “I suppose. Does it satisfy you?’

  “Well, you asked me for an opinion, Hazel, not a finding. I’m satisfied with my opinion.”

  “Huh,” she said, and the tone of her voice made Wingate tilt his head at her. “Actually,” she said to Deacon, “one other thing occurs to me. How common is it to be stung by a wasp at night? Aren’t they usually tucked up tight in their beds at the hour Henry was stung?”

  “I don’t know. I could look into that.”

  “Will you?”

  “Sure.”

  Wingate leaned forward and disconnected. Hazel had been taking notes during the call and she continued to write after Deacon’s voice was cut off.

  “So?”

  She held a finger up. After a moment, she turned her notebook to him and he saw what she’d written there under a number of point-form notations:

  Probable heart attack

  Wasp sting at night?

  “Jack just said he agreed with the reserve’s autopsy.”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Hazel. “He said his opinion was that it was accurate.”

  “And you don’t agree?”

  “I want to be sure.”

  “Okay, listen. I won’t get between you and your hunch anymore, but I don’t think the grieving widow is going to take too kindly to your second thoughts while she’s getting ready to bury her husband.”

  “He’s being cremated. And I wish I didn’t have them. Second thoughts.”

  “You want to have a reason to doubt. That’s what you’re like. My advice is, as I was just about to leave for my first ever vacation as a Westmuir resident, to let it be.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Going to get to know the charms of our scenic county?”

  “Will be completely unreachable.”

  “What’re you going to do, though?” she asked, a little absently. She was adding something to her list.

  “Just some reading. Reading, slowing down, and relaxing.”

  He left. She looked over the thing she’d written at the bottom of her list. Under Wasp sting at night? she’d added, Why the hell was he down there? “Were you buying something?” she said out loud, as if the dead man were in the room with her. “Were you meeting someone? Is that why you parked in the back?”

  She held the list up
and then let it droop away in her hands. What if you were still wild, Henry?

  She buzzed her assistant. “Melanie? Can you find me the number of Eagle Smoke and Souvenir on RR26?”

  ] 3 [

  Tuesday, August 9, early afternoon

  When Hazel walked up the steps of 72 Church Road for the second time in as many days, Cathy Wiest was already standing in the doorway, looking at her with an expression halfway between exhaustion and alarm. She was in a long apron dotted with soap suds and she was wearing rubber gloves. She held up her forearms like a surgeon waiting for a patient.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Hazel said.

  “Nothing important.”

  “Don’t let me stop you from doing your work. I just wanted to come by and see how you were doing.”

  “Are you coming in? I’m dripping on the carpet.”

  Hazel stepped awkwardly into the house and removed her cap. “I won’t stay.” Cathy Wiest was walking back toward the kitchen and Hazel followed. “I just thought I’d come by – ”

  “You said that.” Cathy was standing with her back to her now, at the sink. There was a tower of dishes to her right, on the countertop, and she was lowering them two at a time into soapy water.

  “Looks like I’ve caught you at a bad moment.”

  “Not at all,” Cathy said. “You can make yourself useful if you want.” She held a towel out. Hazel took it from her. Standing beside her now, Hazel saw a curtain rod standing in the sink as well as several pairs of sunglasses.

  “You are cleaning a lot of things.”

  “I’m going through the house and washing everything in it. The laundry is done, including the curtains, and I did the walls this morning.” She passed Hazel a plate. “Are you trying to decide if I’m nuts?”

  “No,” she said, perhaps a bit too fast. “It’s therapy.”