The Devil's Dust (16 page)

She puts these observations in her notepad, and she smiles to herself as she remembers working that bank robbery with McKelvey from the Toronto Hold-Up Squad. She remembers him now, of course she does, and she feels some embarrassment for her failure to make the connection earlier. She remembers how driven he was, tenacious, a dog with a bone. It seemed almost personal, the idea that this serial thief might slip between his fingers. She learned a few things from him, too. Like this. The importance of noting even the most seemingly insignificant observation — the scent of bubble gum, a brand of cigarette, a conversation heard through the thin walls of a cheap hotel.

And then she returns to the paperwork and her dinner of Hickory Sticks.

N
ow McKelvey rides the dark highway in the middle of the night. He replays his visit that afternoon to the high school. “Officer Grandpa,” the kid had called him. Waiting outside the principal's office like he was back in school, sitting there in his jeans with a Saint B police uniform shirt buttoned up. Half a cop is what he felt like. No gun belt, no cuffs, not even a Maglite. The teen sitting across from him, his shaggy hair covering the tops of his eyes, cheeks dotted with acne, laces undone, some breakfast still stuck to the corner of his mouth, it brought McKelvey back to the worst days with his own son. When Gavin became openly defiant, daring McKelvey to … to what?
Hit him
? And he had, too, in that final and explosive encounter which resulted in Gavin running away, Caroline turning inward, the spark that set the whole wilderness of their lives ablaze. He wanted to tell this kid that, while it may seem hard to believe right now, in a few years he would gladly cut his hair and throw on a necktie in exchange for a girl who loves him and the promise of a steady paycheque. All of this posturing and posing will seem like it belonged to someone else, a stranger you hardly knew.

“What are you in for?” McKelvey had asked.

The kid raised his head a little and just blinked. McKelvey recognized the look. He may as well have been a slab of cheddar cheese carved into a duck. A strange and foreign object requiring of simultaneous translation. When the receptionist had called the boy, he rose and pulled his sloppy jeans up from his knees and slunk toward the vice-principal's office for trial and sentencing. It was on his way past that he mumbled that line — “Officer Grandpa” — and it made McKelvey smile now.

The visit to the school had confirmed that a select number of students — those already known or suspected to be marijuana users — seemed to have taken a nosedive over the recent months in terms of attendance and grades. McKelvey convinced the principal that Mark Watson's death made clear the need to circumvent privacy legislation in this instance, and he got a non-official list of five names scrawled on a piece of paper. Mark Watson, Scott Cooper, Travis Lacey, Steve Ridge, and Casey Hartman. These were the students whose behaviour stuck out the most. And three of those students were either in jail or dead. The visit also confirmed the fact that despite being with them and around them every day, even the school administrators seemed caught by surprise. They were in shock.

“I can't believe Mark Watson is dead,” the principal had said with the door to his tiny office closed. McKelvey had been here before, forty-five years ago, a lifetime and just yesterday. A middle-aged man with plain features, the principal seemed an every-man, the sort of actor you'd get to play this very role, a small-town principal. “I've failed these kids,” he said, and his eyes welled. He stared down at the paperclip he was absentmindedly unwinding. “We're supposed to not only
educate
them, but
protect
them as well. We're just like their parents, too busy and caught up with our own lives to notice them,
really
notice them …”

McKelvey grips the wheel now and wishes it could be different, this trip through the strange landscape of adolescence. His mind moves forward to Wade Garson, who waits with what he imagines is an elaborate and far-fetched story he hopes will exonerate him. The explosion at the trailer, he will say, and the eventual discovery of materials used in the production of methamphetamine, well, he had nothing to do with either. He will lawyer up with this shady defence attorney the Chief so detests, this Harry Griffith, and anyway, the cops have nothing of value. Dr. Nichols, with a second opinion provided by Madsen, has confirmed the bones discovered belong to a deer and a large dog. The stabbing and resulting death of Mark Watson cannot be directly linked to Garson, regardless of whether he sold the dope that eventually contributed to a psychotic episode. It is one of the frustrating grey areas of law, and McKelvey has long desired the ability and authority to hold the pimps and dealers of the world accountable for the spinoff misery they cause.

That they must collectively find the source of meth production and distribution in Saint B is without question. This is the task at hand. The boy who stabbed Mark Watson, Scott Cooper, will face the consequences of his actions, to be certain. But McKelvey grips the wheel tighter and his jaw clenches as he relates the predicament of these two boys — the victim and the accused — to the fate of Gavin. And maybe his son would be alive today if he had never tried drugs. He would be alive today if he had never met a member of the Blades bike gang and started selling drugs for him. A bullet took his life, but drugs pulled the trigger.

A big illuminated sign for the Rest-Rite Truck Stop glows like an apparition in the dead darkness of these thick northern woods. Red lettering promises showers, hot meals, laundry, and diesel fuel. McKelvey turns in and drives past a few cars parked out front. The lights are on inside the restaurant, which is empty except for two or three people sitting alone at tables nursing coffees, reading the paper. He slows the cruiser and comes around to the rear of the truck stop. Half a dozen rigs are lined in neat rows on the far side of the building.

He steps from the vehicle and into the chilly grip of the night. The cold makes him shiver and his breath is visible in condensation that hovers in the air like mist. The lot is illuminated with the garish yellow of three tall light posts. As he approaches the back door with the symbol of a man tacked to it, he again second-guesses his quick refusal of Nolan's offer of a gun. He is utterly defenceless as he turns the knob and steps inside.

The washroom is tiled white from floor to ceiling. Four urinals and three stalls, a hand dryer and a metal box dispensing condoms and breath mints bolted to the wall. The room smells of disinfectant and old piss.

McKelvey bends over to look, spots a pair of booted feet in the middle stall.

“Wade,” he says in a loud whisper.

There is no response. He moves closer and pushes the door of the middle stall. It swings slowly to reveal Wade Garson propped on the toilet, fully dressed, leaning back with his eyes staring, mouth hanging open, what looks like a full jar of strawberry jam splashed across the white tiles behind his head. The blood is mixed with bits of hair, white flecks of bone fragment, the glop plastered there and sliding down the tile like a mess made by a kid with craft paint and glue. McKelvey's insides constrict and he steps back. He turns on instinct to the row of sinks and bends to expel a mouthful of nothing. His stomach is empty and he rides the thrum of dry heaves, standing there with his hands gripping the old counter splashed with water and bits of paper towel. He spits, the best he can muster, steps back and wipes his mouth. He stands there in the silence of the truck stop washroom, looking over at the dead body of Wade Garson. And all he can think is
what a lonely goddamned place to die
…

McKelvey is contemplating the body and his next move when he hears the door. Nolan steps in. His eyes go wide when he sees McKelvey, and he takes three steps and looks inside the middle stall.

“Oh, Jesus,” he says.

And then, just as McKelvey has done, Nolan pivots and grips the counter in time to gag and spit into the sink.

The glowing white dome light of the ambulance illuminates the round face and hazel eyes of Inspector Madsen. The paramedics have been sent in to get a coffee and keep warm while Dr. Nichols climbs out of bed to attend his second crime scene in twenty-four hours. Chief Gallagher has arrived in his own four-by-four Jimmy with Madsen, and he secures the washroom while Nolan searches the immediate perimeter. McKelvey and Madsen sit in the back of the ambulance reviewing the facts of the situation.

“Gallagher called me after Nolan called him,” she says. “Chief was on his way out here before he thought to loop me in. I told him I'll need a vehicle of my own. I'm not going to be dependent on some …” and she searches for words, frustrated. “Some silver-haired misogynist.”

Misogynist
. McKelvey rolls the word on his tongue. He understands the notion, for he himself has been guilty of the charge. Sure he has. In those days when the first women started appearing like an alien species inside the sanctum of the squad room. The environment, the jokes, everything changed. It would be a lie to say otherwise. But it was only now, in his old man's hindsight, that McKelvey could see the change had been for the better. He believed that men and women saw the world through a different lens, and it was by combining these views into the same set of glasses that their collective work was heightened.

“Gallagher's a small-town sheriff at heart,” McKelvey says. It is not an excuse, simply a statement of the facts. “He feels threatened with the provincial cops coming in. Even more so that it's a woman. He's all bark.”

McKelvey looks around at the boxes of bandages, clear IV lines, tubes, tapes, chrome parts shining, and he feels too close to
infirmity
. The sense of vulnerability he has always found in hospitals, doctor's waiting rooms, it feels to him like suffocation. He is not dizzy, but he feels a little off-centre. This is the fog he still carries thanks to the pills, or more rightly, their absence. He still feels a little like a tube of toothpaste that has been rolled and squeezed in the hope of coaxing one last dab. He looks at Madsen and she sort of smiles at him, but not quite. For some reason she reminds him of a cub reporter on the police beat, sitting there with her back straight, eyes wide to the world, notepad peeled.

“So you arrived here at, what, midnight or shortly after?”

“Five past midnight,” he says.

“Constable Nolan responded at 12:13,” she reads. “Found you in the washroom, the body of Wade Garson in the middle stall. Nolan secured the scene and called the Chief at 12:20. Nolan called for paramedics at 12:21. Nolan then gathered the restaurant staff and the three customers at a table. You secured the scene until the Chief and I arrived.”

McKelvey gets up and opens the doors of the ambulance, lets in the night air. He sits back down on the stretcher and steadies himself. He is lightheaded, a little dry of mouth.

“Garson called me,” McKelvey says, and glances at his watch, “an hour and twenty-five minutes ago.”

“How did he have your number?”

“Said he had to call directory a bunch of times. We could check the records on the phone booth out by the highway. I'm pretty sure that's where he called from. Said he couldn't trust the local cops, so he took a chance. He wasn't home when his trailer exploded. Felt he was being set up. He must have been desperate, because my only interaction with him didn't go in his favour.”

Madsen makes notes. The deck of the ship is swaying, and so McKelvey closes his eyes a moment and imagines his feet planted firmly on the ground. He opens his eyes and the world is still.

“How long did it take you to get out here?” she asks.

“About thirty-five minutes. I had to wash my face and throw on some clothes first. I wasn't feeling very good.”

“It hit me when the Chief called and told me about Garson's murder here at the truck stop. Someone in the hotel has a police radio or a scanner,” Madsen says. “I heard the call through the wall. The guy left right after the call was dispatched that Garson was seen at the truck stop. I'll need to see who's staying in the room next door.”

“So who was here in the truck stop in the last hour?” McKelvey's brain is beginning to work again, finding the old slots and grooves. It's like riding a bike. It all comes back to him as he sets in motion the line of questioning, the trail of evidence to be checked and eliminated.

“Travelling salesman, a trucker, and some fellow from Detroit,” Madsen says.

“Guy named Celluci by any chance?”

She regards her notes. “That's it. You know him?”

“We've met. Where's Nolan now?”

As though on cue, Nolan comes around the side and stands there in the wide band of light cast from the ambulance. He holds between his gloved thumb and forefinger a small silver revolver with a pearl-grip handle.

“In the trash can by the side of the building,” he says.

“Bag it,” Madsen says. “Where's the Chief?”

“He's securing the body,” Nolan tells her. “Dr. Nichols is just pulling in.”

“I've put a call into HQ requesting a forensics officer, likely from the Timmins detachment,” Madsen informs them. “But it could be late morning tomorrow before they get here. That's if this storm they're calling for blows over. I have a little video camera in my bag. I can shoot a three-sixty of the scene.”

She steps down from the ambulance, then pauses to regard the revolver still gripped between Nolan's fingers.

“A .38 Smith & Wesson,” she says. “Six-shot, four-inch barrel. It's cute.”

Madsen walks over toward the restaurant doors. Nolan watches her go. When he is sure she is out of earshot, he says, “Charlie. This gun, I've seen it before.”

McKelvey lifts himself up and steps down from the ambulance. He does not want to spend another minute in the back of that place, that transporter of the infirm, the dead, the dying. He wants to wash himself, cleanse himself of bad karma.

McKelvey says, “She's right. It is cute.”

“It's the
Chief's
,” Nolan says in a loud whisper.

McKelvey stares at the younger cop.

“His personal weapon,” Nolan says. “Keeps it at the station in the lockbox.”

Nolan's face betrays a mixture of bewilderment, fear, confusion, and disappointment. McKelvey thinks Nolan looks like a father who has found contraband in his son's bedroom.

“You're positive?”

“As sure as I can be. I'd have to go and check the locker, of course, but this is the only gun like it that I've ever seen. Jesus, Charlie. What does this mean? What do we do now?”