A Door in the River Read online

  “No,” said Hazel flatly. “I just want to be sure you’re completely confident that your investigation was thorough.”

  “I’m beginning to understand you think differently.”

  Hazel opened her portfolio and took out a copy of Deacon’s autopsy and passed it to the commander. LeJeune began reading it slowly. After a moment, she muttered, “Goodness” and passed it to Bellecourt. She put her finger on what Hazel presumed was the salient detail.

  “Oh gosh,” said RC Bellecourt.

  “So my next question is, where would a person in Queesik Bay come across a Taser? Or something like it?”

  “I doubt that’s what made these marks on Mr. Wiest,” said Bellecourt.

  “Well, unless you have electronic wasps here, it had to be something that could pierce a person’s skin and give them a lethal shock.”

  “Tasers aren’t lethal, Detective Inspector.”

  “I know they’re not supposed to be. But fifty thousand volts is an unpredictable amount of electricity, don’t you think?”

  “Do you not have Tasers on your force?” LeJeune asked.

  Hazel shifted in her seat. “We don’t need them.”

  “Everyone needs Tasers. And they don’t kill people unless you bash someone over the head with one. And it’s not volts that kill, anyway. It’s amps. Current, you know? How many Taser deaths were reported in North America last year, Lydia?”

  “There were none, Commander.”

  “Detective Inspector Micallef thinks it’s possible Henry Wiest was killed by a Taser.”

  “I must admit,” said Bellecourt, “I do think it very unlikely. A Taser barb stays in the victim. It shoots out what are little more than two miniature jumper cables. They really get in there and they can leave a significant wound. These ‘sting’ wounds in Mr. Wiest weren’t made by a Taser.”

  “I didn’t think of that, Lydia,” said LeJeune. “That’s excellent.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Hazel. “The point is, he was murdered. He was electrocuted.”

  Commander LeJeune’s eyes lit up. “Oh, thank you,” she said.

  “Thank you?”

  LeJeune was accepting a tray of tea from one of her administrative assistants, and she put it on her desk and poured each of them a cup. “Try this,” she said. “It’s cranberry tea. It’s excellent for a lot of things.” This woman was so poised it was unholy. She reminded Hazel of Chip Willan, but where his stance was one of self-possessed malice, LeJeune was being genuinely professional. Her attention was still on someone standing in the doorway behind her. Hazel finally turned and caught another constable, this one a man of about twenty-eight, mouthing something to his commanding officer.

  “What is going on here?” Hazel asked.

  “I’m sorry,” said LeJeune, waving the man away, “it’s just that we’re planning a small party for Constable Bellecourt here –”

  “I’m getting married.”

  “Congratulations,” Hazel muttered.

  “We won’t be disturbed again.”

  “It’s fine, I understand.”

  “Let’s get back to the matter. So, it wasn’t an insect sting that killed Henry Wiest. And you need to reopen the case. I understand that now. You will have our full cooperation.”

  “Thank you,” said Hazel after a moment spent digesting the strange aura of honesty and warmth in the room. These people needed to be 40 per cent more cynical than they were. She turned to Bellecourt and tried to act gracious. “Honestly, my heartiest congratulations, Constable.”

  “Are you married, Detective Inspector?” Bellecourt asked.

  “Not anymore,” she said, and the glow in the constable’s face guttered slightly. “Look, if you really want to help me, make me an introduction to your pathologist.”

  “Of course,” said LeJeune. “I’ll have Lydia tell Dr. Brett you’re on your way over.”

  “And then I want to poke around a bit.”

  “Would you object to a chaperone?”

  “You mean a carefully guided tour.”

  “You may want to go into the casino,” Bellecourt said.

  “Do you think I should?” she asked. “What’s it like in there?”

  “Well, if you’re going to poke around, you might as well have a look in there. Lots of people in the casino. But if I accompany you, I can smooth the way, you being in nonreserve uniform and all. Or are you going to go plainclothes?”

  “I’ll go see your doc first,” Hazel said. “And sure, you can meet me at the casino in half an hour, Constable Bellecourt. I suppose I might as well have a gander.”

  “You could meet Lee,” she said.

  “Lee?”

  “Her fiancé,” said LeJeune.

  “As long as I don’t have to witness too much joy.”

  “Lee’s the manager of the casino,” LeJeune continued. “You’d probably want to make his acquaintance anyway. Maybe you can stand a few feet back, Constable, to cool your ardour.”

  That was agreeable to Bellecourt, and Commander LeJeune placed a call to the hospital and arranged Hazel’s visit. She gave her a map of the reserve and circled the hospital. “It’s a two-minute drive,” she said.

  “I’ll walk it.” Hazel took the map and rose and the other two women stood and watched her out. She felt eyes on her as she retraced her steps to the front of the detachment and left the building.

  It was still more than twenty degrees outside and the sun hadn’t set. It was Wednesday night, but cars were streaming into the front parking lots of the casino just down the road to her left.

  The main road – which was called Queesik Bay Road locally but was officially RR26 – ran directly in front of the building and she turned right, following the map. The hospital was visible from where she was, a large, low building with a roadside post topped by a large H. Church Bay Road, the one that ran behind the casino, met RR26 just before it. She got to the hospital in ten minutes and got directions to the morgue from the information desk. The man who met her, Dr. Brett, brought her into his office. He was a handsome man in his fifties with a short, red beard. Commander LeJeune had already faxed the Mayfair autopsy. “Looks like we screwed up, Detective,” he said.

  “Do you even know what a wasp sting looks like?”

  Brett opened a file folder that was sitting at the edge of his desk. “Yes. It looks exactly like a hard, swollen, raised welt, white in the middle where the venom has been injected and ringed with red.” He slipped out a couple of 8 × 10 photos and slid one of them across to her. He laid the tip of a pen on the image of Henry Wiest’s cheek, where there was an angry red dot. “Here’s an excellent representation of one.”

  Wiest’s body had lost its lividity by the time Deacon had seen it on his slab, and it had looked completely different than what she was seeing in Brett’s picture. Here, Wiest had been dead for less than ninety minutes. He still had colour; his flesh still looked alive. She realized, perhaps with some disappointment, that there had been no cover-up here. Any doctor, even a particularly talented and discerning one, probably would have concluded Wiest had died of anaphylaxis due to an insect sting. Probably a bee or a wasp. Any hope that this Dr. Brett was involved, somehow, was already vapour. “Fine,” she said now. “I’m gathering that, knowing what you know now, you’re not of the opinion that there was any way to arrive at Dr. Deacon’s interpretation when you looked at the body?”

  “Likely not.”

  “Then tell me this. Do you agree with Dr. Deacon’s report?”

  “Well,” he said, “I’ve already made the mistake once of not seeing everything in front of me, Detective. I’d better not make it again. It certainly sounds reasonable, but I’d have to do my own autopsy over.”

  “And say you did, then. Keeping a completely open mind, what other possibilities would you be considering?”

  “I wouldn’t consider any other possibilities unless new evidence presented itself.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that I w
ould confirm Dr. Deacon’s autopsy, with the understanding that if I made any other findings, they could have an effect on my interpretation.”

  “Is it likely that after a third autopsy, meaningful new discoveries could be made?”

  “Anything is possible.”

  “But is it likely?”

  Brett’s tongue worked the space behind his upper lip. “You are trying to get me to say I agree with Dr. Deacon’s findings without redoing my own autopsy, Detective Inspector. That’s not cricket.”

  “But it sounds like Henry Wiest was electrocuted, yes?”

  She saw a faint look of irritation cross the doctor’s face. “Look, I was trained at the University of Toronto. I did my rotations at Mount Sinai Hospital and Sick Kids. I have a subspecialty in infectious diseases. I’m not a country bumpkin and I’m not even a native, but I’ll tell you something: if you’ve come up here to catch us out, you’ll be sorely disappointed. This is a working community, with experts, mostly Indian, at every level of the municipality. I didn’t do further tests because I didn’t think it was necessary, and almost every pathologist faced with a body that presented as Wiest’s did would have stopped where I did, too.”

  “But. Given everything you know now, being a trained doctor and everything, it really does look like he was electrocuted. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Brett.”

  ] 8 [

  The same night

  Outside of the hospital, the August night was finally falling, and Hazel realized she’d been working for almost twelve hours.

  She retraced her steps toward the casino and walked down the long driveway lined with bright flowers up to the front doors. RC Bellecourt was waiting for her. The constable offered her hand – everyone was so bloody proper here – and the two of them went inside. Instantly the remaining daylight was annulled. Smoked glass gave the casino an intimate nighttime feel, and as she approached the inner doors, she could also feel the soothing blast of air-conditioning from within. One of the casino’s security guards was standing beside a podium and stepped out toward them as they reached the inner doors. “Is there anything wrong, Constable Bellecourt?” His uniform was too big on him.

  “No,” she said, “not at all. This is Detective Inspector Micallef, and she’s just here to have a look-see.”

  The guard offered his hand. “Jesus,” Hazel muttered as she shook it.

  “Now, ma’am, I hope you won’t be gambling while on duty! That would be against provincial laws.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Hazel said. “I just wanted to look around.”

  “Well,” he said, “normally, you’d need a player’s card to go in. It’s a members-only casino, but anyone can be a member.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” she said. “If just anyone can be a member?”

  The guard smiled warmly at her. “That’s just the rules here, ma’am.” He stepped aside and let them pass.

  The moment they entered the casino proper, the dark silence of the foyer was cancelled by an eruption of sound and light. Electronic bells clanged, chips clacked against each other, voices rose. And although it was much cooler in here – as she began to walk between the banks of slot machines with Constable Bellecourt exactly two steps behind her – she also detected little ribbons of sour heat coming off the machines and the people who worked them. Overheating transistors and flop sweat. There was a seizure-inducing scintillation of light everywhere.

  Bellecourt leaned into toward her and said into her ear, “Dr. Brett is a nice guy, huh?”

  “A prince.” She tried to put a bit more distance between them, but from the sounds of the constable’s footfalls, she was keeping up.

  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 aroun
d 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.”