The Devil's Dust (23 page)

N
olan answers his cellphone and tells McKelvey that by some miracle he is still awake. Celluci has not left his room for the past five hours. In that time, he says, he has received an update on the health and social status of most of Saint B's population, courtesy of Duncan, who could likely be classified as a civilian informant.

“You remember the break-in at the Co-op,” McKelvey says, throwing it out there. “Younger said you requested the report he wrote and that he assumed you and the Chief had followed up on it.”

There is silence.

“I looked here at the shop and can't find a record of the report,” McKelvey adds.

Nolan sighs. “I fucked up,” he says. “With my paperwork. I got behind and I started taking it home to sort through. But with my dad and everything. Charlie, there's no excuse. We're a small town and you get lazy. I'm behind on all of that stuff.”

“Did you discuss the theft with your Chief?” McKelvey asks. “These were highly dangerous chemicals. There must be a procedure for informing the community.”

“There were no real leads to follow,” Nolan says. “We figured it was a poor farmer needing some materials for his land or a bunch of drunk kids. We dropped the ball, I guess. Will this go on my record?”

“You have a copy of the police report at your house?”

“I'll take a look tonight.”

There is a long pause. And then Nolan sighs again and says, “Are you disappointed in me, Charlie?”

“Don't worry about me, Ed. Find that report.”

Madsen is just walking into the lobby of the Station Hotel when her cellphone rings.

“Madsen.”

“You somewhere you can talk right now?”

It's McKelvey.

She looks over at Nolan sitting on the bench that runs beneath the stairwell. The young cop is closing his cellphone and slipping it in his pocket. He looks over at her and nods.

“Go ahead,” she says.

“A report on the Co-op theft was filed by Pete Younger. There's no trace of it at the station. Younger said Nolan asked for the report but he never filed it. Nolan says now that he got sloppy with paperwork because he's been preoccupied with his father.”

She looks over at Nolan. The young man who still wears the toque rolled on top of his head to hide the damage done by Travis Lacey's shovel.

“What are you thinking?” she says, and moves through the lobby to the hallway leading to the tavern side.

“It's plausible,” McKelvey says. “I mean, we all get sloppy from time to time. But on this, I'm just not sure he isn't protecting someone.”

“His chief,” Madsen says in almost a whisper.

“Maybe. Is there anything in this kid's profile or background that would suggest this is anything besides bad timing for shoddy paperwork?”

“I can have the geeks at headquarters run a few checks.”

“I've got another update, too. I'm meeting the chief of Big Water First Nation at seven. He's got a package of documents that should prove Carl Levesque committed fraud with his land deal. We should ask Nolan to head over to Levesque's place and camp out there after you relieve him. That way we know where both of them are.”

“Long day for him.”

“Welcome to the life of police stakeouts.”

“It's interesting,” she says, this thought just occurring to her. “A person of interest is watching a person of interest.”

“And who says small towns are boring, eh?”

T
he Coffee Time is empty and McKelvey is glad. Peggy's back is facing the door as she fills the machines with water, but she turns when the door opens. She smiles, and McKelvey smiles back. He smells burnt coffee and icing sugar.

“Special auxiliary agent McKelvey,” she says. “Did I get that right?”

“You forgot
senior
. Senior special auxiliary agent.”

“Coffee?”she asks, but she's already filling a mug.

He takes one of the swivel seats at the counter.

“Thanks. The other night when I called. It was …”

She sets her forearms across the counter and leans in. There is such a quiet peace that runs through this woman, it is something he wants to better understand. He has wondered if it's something he could himself learn to own.
Can he head back to the city and face what he must face with peace and grace?

“You don't have to say anything,” she says. “I figured there was something on your mind, that's all.”

“There was,” he says. “There is.”

He turns the hot mug by the handle. Steam rises from the black brew. “I need to be back in the city. I ran away, I guess. From my responsibilities. I feel like a teenager saying that. But it's true. I should be in Toronto right now taking care of some health issues. And I'm not. I'm sitting here in a coffee shop five hundred miles away.”

Peggy tilts her head a little, regarding him.

“You have the bluest eyes I've ever seen, Charlie.” And she smiles that smile. “But they're sad most of the time. There's so much going on up there. And I know something happened to you, something that changed everything. I used to have the same look in my eyes.”

“If you got all that from my eyes, you should read my palm.”

“And I know how you hit and run and deflect, like you did just now.”

“Old habits,” he says, and shrugs.

“We can change,” she tells him. “We can know a new freedom from our past.”

He takes a drink of the coffee. “I'm turning sixty,” he says. “I feel like a hundred and eleven.”

“We're never too old to believe in God.”

He recoils at the word, and his face changes. “This is not going to turn into a sermon about being born again, is it?”

Peggy laughs. She shakes her head, as though she both understands and expects the reaction. “It's not like that, Charlie. It's not about religion and church or any man-made concepts of fear and punishment. I'm talking about
spirit
. And power. Knowing that you don't have to do anything alone. You've got that power inside you, Charlie. We all do. You know as well as I do that you can look back across your life and see things that happened that can't be explained as coincidence. People coming into your life at exactly the right moment. It's amazing how everything changes when we release the grip a little bit. The things we thought were most important in life slip to the bottom of the list. Sometimes they even fall right off.”

“I just, what, sit back and wait for the transformation?”

She nods her chin at him. “Already happening,” she says.

He lifts his head and smiles at her. He sits there and his mind again recalls the lines from the poem or the prayer that she gave him. And he understands now, he sees the connection from there to here. He is unsure how to walk that distance, but he feels a new confidence or comfort simply in the knowledge that he, too, might just make it yet.

“That's quite a cup of coffee you pour,” he says.

The envelope seems to stare at McKelvey, even from beneath the old newspaper which he has placed on top. It is as though the package gives off a signal or a current, something he can feel inside the very centre of his body, pulsating or stabbing. It makes his heart race and his stomach clench in anticipation. He paces in the kitchen and then picks up the envelope and holds it and turns it in his hand. He reads the handwritten inscription for the hundredth time.
The truth the truth the truth the truth
…

This thing that happened, this event that hung over the town like a storm cloud for a generation. And almost nobody who was around back then is around today to sit and look the truth in the eye. Nobody will be held responsible, there will be no charges laid, of that he is almost certain. But the truth is there. The truth about his father. He thinks of Peggy, and he thinks of the lines from that prayer:
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life …

He gets a butter knife from the drawer and opens the envelope. His heart presses against his ribs. He pulls the papers free and sees immediately that this is an old police report. The top page features a faded inked stamp of the Saint B police mark, the date — July 15, 1954 — and then a handwritten statement across the following three pages. He flips through to the last page and squints to read the signatures. It is signed by George Fergus and initialled by the investigating officer, R. Douglas.

The room closes in and he has to sit down at the kitchen table. He takes a moment to catch his breath. He feels like a boy again, watching his father unseen from around the corner. And he reads:

My name is George Fergus and I'm a steward with the union. I'm giving this statement to make clear what happened the day Clifford Whitehorse was killed. We pulled a wildcat on account of the management taking away shift premiums for working doubles or if you worked the midnight shifts for more than two weeks in a row. It was that and other things too, more than I can list here. Safety was of no concern for the company, and the equipment was always breaking down.

The men voted in favour to walk off and we did. The company had no right to bring scab workers onto the site. Different things got talked about. Actions we could take. I authorized the boys to make a little bomb just to damage one of the company trucks they parked to block the yard. It was a bad time and we had no choices left but to think of our families not eating and getting into debt because of these scab workers, and to send a message to the company that we were serious.

Duncan Stewart, Nick Jalonen, Grey McKelvey, and myself took the lead on that operation. It was Grey McKelvey who was the only one of us could make the thing because of his army experience and I had to convince him to do this. I take responsibility for telling him what I did, which was a guarantee that nobody would get hurt. We were to put the little bomb in the truck at night and let her go off. I'm the one who went and moved the box over to that shed. I had seen the Indian scab working in there the day before. I'm not giving up my job to any man, but I'll be damned if I'll give up my job to an Indian. I moved that bomb to the shed and put it under some rags in the corner.

Duncan got wind of this and he told Grey and then there was a fight between all of us that night and some punches thrown. Grey went down there to the yard and he climbed the fence to try and get in that shed and get the bomb out. That's why the security guard told you in his affidavit that he caught Grey McKelvey by the fence that night. He was climbing the fence to get in, not out. Duncan said Grey tried to tell the security guards about the shed and the bomb but they wouldn't listen. They beat him with their sticks and chased him off …

There is more, but McKelvey has read enough. He sits back and exhales. He imagines George Fergus provided this statement with the intention of clearing the air once and for all, perhaps even to take responsibility and face the consequences. Given the times, the racial and labour tensions, McKelvey can easily imagine a mayor, the company president, or even a police chief pulling this report and burying its secret — the fact the company's own security guards were negligent in failing to prevent the replacement worker's death.

McKelvey sits at the table for a long time. He sees his father standing right there, the fridge door open, counting bottles of beer, the laces of his workboots untied. He wants to go over and hug the man's leg from the floor, the way he did when he was so little, to look straight up at this towering man. And he can't imagine how his father lived with this for the rest of his days, his role in the death of a man, his valiant but futile attempts to stop it. And in the end was it for the better of the whole community, for all of the families of all of the workers, that these few men lived and died with their secret?

It is not McKelvey's place to forgive his father, but he understands and sees things in a new way, with the clarity of truth. His father was a good man, a hard-working man, a man who made a mistake that cost a man his life.

He tucks the envelope under his arm and he heads back out into the night and to the Station Hotel. There are four vehicles in the back parking lot, one of them a black SUV he recognizes. He removes the mic from the holder and presses the talk button.

“McKelvey to Nolan.”

The radio snaps some static, a faint sound like popcorn popping.

“Nolan here.” His voice comes across the radio. He sounds tired, dozy.

“What's your 10-20?” McKelvey asks.

“Sitting half a block down from Carl's place,” Nolan says. And then he yawns. “He came home about an hour ago with a case of beer. No movement since.”

“Ten-four,” McKelvey says, feeling himself slide easily back into the life of patrol cars and speaking in codes, the constant action relayed across the radio. “It'll be a long night, kid. But we can't risk Levesque slipping out of town.”

“Are we any closer to that warrant for Celluci? I know Madsen's keeping an eye on him, but he's the real flight risk. Carl's too lazy to bother running, and he thinks he's too smart for us anyway.”

“You just sit tight, Ed,” McKelvey says. “Madsen is working on the papers. We're close.”

“I'm starving,” the younger cop says.

McKelvey smiles as his mind floods with memories of his first stakeouts. Sitting in unmarked cars across from pool halls or taverns, outside banks, these endless hours with nothing to do but stay awake and talk to the asshole sitting beside you. Doughnuts, coffees, cheeseburgers, and sometimes, in the middle of the night, a pull from a mickey of rye, something to warm the bones. Within those moments McKelvey had felt fully alive, connected to something bigger than himself. And he feels it again now.

“I'll roll by with something after I meet with the chief from Big Water.”

“I'd kill for a stale doughnut.”

Whitehorse sits alone at a table with a glass of what looks like ginger ale, a file folder to the side. His hands are clasped and McKelvey thinks for a moment the man could be meditating. The tables around him are empty, and three men sit in a row at the bar, older men nursing draft beers and talking about the way things were.

The bartender nods as McKelvey walks across the room.

“Pint?” The bartender is holding a clean glass, hopeful.

McKelvey shakes his head and the bartender gives him a dirty look. Business is down, business is slow, and this is not a community drop-in centre.

“Good evening,” McKelvey says, and pulls up a chair. He sets his envelope on the table.

“My nephew didn't want me to come,” Whitehorse says. “His counsel was to the effect that we can and will deal ourselves with any trespass against the people of Big Water.”

“I understand,” says McKelvey. And he does. God, how he does. He wishes he could tell this man the lengths to which he himself has gone in order to feel the grip and the squeeze of vengeance within his own grasp, to believe with a fervent righteousness that you are vindicated to any extent.

“David is like a horse that is still more wild than tame. I'm older and I've learned to listen to my head as much as my heart. I am accountable to my people for trusting this man Levesque. And I will face whatever consequences I must face. But you and the law you represent must hold him accountable.”

Whitehorse gathers the file folder and hands it to McKelvey.

“There are falsified deeds,” Whitehorse says, “a copy of the cheque we issued, and signed copies of the contractual agreement we drew up and had witnessed.”

McKelvey flips through the pages. He understands the world of misrepresentation and misappropriation having worked the Fraud Squad for six years before making the Hold-Up Squad. It is a world of forgery and lies, paperwork and bafflement. So many of the fraud artists escape punishment due to the embarrassment of their victims. So many companies turn the other cheek rather than admit to shareholders and the public that they were duped from the inside.

“This is good for a warrant,” McKelvey says.

Whitehorse takes a drink and the ice cubes rattle.

“I have something for you,” McKelvey says, offering the envelope. And he feels as though he is watching himself, watching the scene from a distance. He sees the face of his father, the face of George Fergus, old men with silver hair and memories that can't be trusted.

“What's this?” Whitehorse asks, holding the envelope as though he is not yet certain he will accept it.

“The strike,” McKelvey says. “The day your uncle died.”

“He didn't die,” Whitehorse says gravely, “he was killed. We recognize the difference.”

McKelvey nods. “I believe there's information in there that will shed some light.”

The men look into each other's eyes for a long moment. The history of their respective ancestors passes between them. There is nothing more to be said. McKelvey stands and extends a hand. Whitehorse looks at him for a moment and then stands as well. Their hands clasp and they shake.