Hungry Ghosts Read online

  “You should drop by the blockade too,” said Bill. “They’re having a sweat tonight. Starts at sunset. You look like you could use one. You been drinking?”

  “Me? Not for years.”

  “Then you’re good to go.”

  Pike nodded. A sweat sounded like a good idea. “What’s going on with the blockade, Bill? We don’t get much news about it down south.”

  Wabigoon shook his head. “Federal government promised my dad that pulp mill would never open again, not after what happened. But they started her up a few months ago. We tried to get Indian Affairs to close it down and they ignored us. They said the province issued the licence, deal with them. Ontario said it was legal; if we had a problem in our traditional territory, deal with the feds. ‘Never’ don’t mean much to the white man.”

  “What do you mean, after what happened?”

  “Back in the seventies, when my dad was chief, that mill dumped twenty thousand pounds of mercury in the Wabigoon River. Used it to bleach the paper. My dad told me the levels of mercury were three times higher than Health Canada’s guidelines. Federal government told everyone to stop eating fish.” Wabigoon snorted. “The province shut down our guiding operations up here about ten years later, then the commercial fishery. Put everyone out of work. Even though they said we couldn’t prove we were poisoned. Ontario said if there was mercury in the water, it got there by itself. Feds finally settled up with us a few years ago after we sued them, but they never did anything to clean up the water.”

  Pike could feel his anger rise. The Wabigoon River was where the Manomin Bay First Nation got its water, its food. “Don’t eat the big fish,” his mishomis had always warned. Now he knew why. “What about the mill? What do they say about it?”

  “Mill says they don’t dump mercury in the water anymore, so it’s not their problem. But our biologists say it’s still there. Soon as they start logging timber, the erosion’s going to cause it to leach back into the bay. More of our people are going to end up sick again. Or dead.”

  Pike shook his head, disgusted. It seemed like First Nation land was always a dumping ground for other people’s garbage. “Aren’t the feds going to do anything?”

  “You kidding? We had to pay to get our own medical experts to come up here and check us out. We took the money out of our trust funds. They force us to go to court, but they don’t give us money for lawyers either. The doctor we used to get everyone tested, that came out of this year’s education money too.”

  Pike exhaled. “What did the experts say?”

  “Still waiting on the results. Brought a professor up from the University of Manitoba. Maylene Kesler. She ran a clinic in town; tested everyone, even some of the white people that live nearby, but I still haven’t heard what she found. We had a doctor come all the way from Japan a few months ago too. That’s where they first got this disease, eh? Minamata disease, they call it. They had two thousand victims over there. They got a settlement too—eighty-six million dollars. Doctor said he was shocked. He was here before. He tested everybody back when Chesley was still chief. Every single person he saw the first time round is dead, even the children. He says that most everyone has symptoms now, or will.

  “It’s exposure, Charlie. The more you’re around mercury, the sicker you get. But Health Canada don’t even test us anymore. They say our mercury levels are below their safety guidelines. I think maybe the problem is those guidelines. They’re made for people who eat fish once in a while, not people like us who eat it every day.”

  “Jesus,” said Pike. “No wonder you’re trying to shut the mill down.”

  “Funny thing, eh? If we hadn’t left, you and me, we’d probably be sick too.” Wabigoon nodded. “Once the weather clears, we plan to rent a couple of buses and head south to march on Queens Park. Two hundred and fifty dollars, Charlie. It’s enough to make you cry.”

  “What’s that, Bill?” asked Pike. He closed his notebook and put it in his pocket as he got to his feet.

  “That’s how much the feds paid to settle the lawsuit. Two hundred and fifty dollars for each one of our people that died.”

  27

  As he drove up the long driveway, Charlie Pike remembered the first time he’d been sent to knock on Chesley Wabigoon’s door. Chesley was chief then: a tall man with a big paunch and a bigger temper.

  Charlie’s mother had given him a gift to take over to Billy’s mom, who had just come home from the south with another baby. The Wabigoons were a large family with six or seven children. Billy was the oldest, but he’d been forced to go to residential school over Chesley’s objections. Billy’s mother cried when they put her son in the back of the police car. Billy came back the summer he turned fifteen, angry, his father’s son.

  As the young Charlie approached the Wabigoons’ front door, Billy and another boy that Pike didn’t know blocked his way. “You got any smokes?” Billy said. He was older than Charlie and heavier. Stronger. Charlie was twelve, and still pretty small. “Got some money?”

  Charlie shook his head, confused. Where would he get money or cigarettes?

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Scones. For your mother. Because of the baby.”

  “Yeah? Well, give them to me.”

  Charlie weighed the odds of getting the shit kicked out of him if he didn’t turn them over. He reluctantly handed Billy the bag. His mother would be mad at him, but she wasn’t likely to bloody his nose.

  “You’re the baby, asshole,” Billy Wabigoon said.

  “Fucking Mohawk.” The other boy spat on the dirt.

  Charlie walked down the road slowly, not wanting to look like he was running away. He expected to hear the bigger boys pounding down the gravel behind him. When he was far enough away to feel safe, he looked back. The boys were sitting on the step, pushing the warm pastries into their mouths.

  Charlie Pike knocked on the door a couple of times before he opened it. “Freda?”

  “Well, hello, Charlie,” said Freda Wabigoon as she walked into the front room. “It’s been a long time, eh?”

  Pike remembered her as a young woman in her early teens. A strong woman from a family of fishermen, she often went out on the boats in the spring and ice-fished in winter. She had put on a lot of weight over the years, had the bloating that usually accompanied diabetes or alcoholism, or both.

  “I have some baloney and a pot of macaroni and cheese on the stove. You want some lunch, Charlie? Got some whitefish we pulled up this morning. I’d make bannock, but we can’t get to the stores today, everything’s closed. But even then, it’s expensive, eh? Twelve bucks for a bag of flour.”

  Processed food was killing First Nations people everywhere. When Pike ran away, the people of Manomin Bay were still hunters, trappers. They sold their fish, too, despite the laws against it. They were quiet about it. They didn’t take them door to door in White Harbour, peddling their fish, brooms, and baskets the way they did when his mishomis was a young boy. But Pike hadn’t seen many skins hanging to dry on the sides of the houses.

  Not that hunting and trapping were any easier than fishing. Pike’s grandfather had to wade waist-deep into ice-cold waters to set his muskrat traps. And even this far north, white men sometimes shot at him and lifted his traps.

  “I’ll get your lunch ready,” said Freda. “I’ll make some tea. You take sugar?”

  “Miigwetch.”

  “Pauley?” she called out. “Someone’s here to see you. He must be on the computer in his bedroom,” she explained to Pike when no one responded. “Our other boys are at school today. Imagine, three teenage boys in one little room. We have a daughter too. Doris. She wants to be a nurse. She’s at college. At Lakehead.”

  “You must be proud of her.”

  Freda smiled. “I’m proud of Bill too. He’s done good, Charlie. There’s lots of people who want him to run for regional chief of the A
ssembly of First Nations.”

  Like O’Malley, Charlie Pike thought all politicians were crooks, whether they were white or Aboriginal. But Indian politics was as fast as lacrosse and required just as much skill. Bill was good at lacrosse, and he knew how to skate too.

  “Sounds like politics is where he belongs, Freda. Are you Pauley’s legal guardian?” He got out his notebook. “I should maybe talk to him before we have lunch.”

  “Yes, I’m his guardian, but only because Molly’s gone.”

  “He’s fourteen, right? I need his birth date for my report.”

  “August 11, 1992. You go ahead, I’ll get things ready.”

  Pike thought for a moment. Pauley Oshig was a youth under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. He wasn’t supposed to be questioned at all without an adult present. He was a witness, not a suspect, but even so Pike didn’t like the idea of questioning the boy without an adult.

  “You can come in if you want, Freda. You have that right. Might be a good idea.”

  Freda Wabigoon shook her head sadly. “No, I have things to do in the kitchen. I don’t want to hear about that poor dead woman anymore, anyway. I said another little prayer for her today.”

  28

  Manuel Flores stood up. He looked tired and weak. It was clear that their session was over. Inspector Ramirez and Detective Espinoza got to their feet. They gathered the exhibits and put them back in the cardboard boxes.

  “How do you do it, Dr. Flores?” asked Espinoza. “How do you get inside their heads?”

  “I wish I could say I found it harder, Detective, but I’ve seen a lot of men die. An eye for an eye, a hanging for a shooting. That’s what it was like in 1961, after the Bay of Pigs. They lined them up against the wall at La Cabaña. The firing squads always shot them at night when the cannon was being fired, to mask the noise. For years, I used to wake up my wife, shouting. I still see those men sometimes in my dreams.”

  Flores smiled. He placed a hand on Espinoza’s back, steering him towards the door.

  “You think that the killer brought those stockings with him, don’t you?” said Espinoza.

  Flores nodded. “I told you, he’s organized. He’s a hunter, this one. These murders are his expeditions. Like the photographs of Hemingway in the Hotel Floridita, standing over a dead tiger. The killer uses nylons tied like a ribbon to show off his prize. I think this week’s victim was his second kill. Remember the brand of cigarette? Double Happiness.”

  Inspector Ramirez drove Espinoza back to police headquarters. He and Espinoza carried the boxes up to the exhibit room and logged them in, then Espinoza returned to his desk to check missing person reports. As soon as Ramirez entered his office, the phone on his desk trilled.

  “I have a call for you from Celia Jones, the Canadian lawyer,” the switchboard operator said. “Shall I put her through?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The line buzzed for a moment as the operator made the connection.

  “Hola, Celia,” said Ramirez. “How are things in Canada?”

  “Honestly? Really freaking cold. I’m at my parents’ place in Northern Ontario for a few days. It’s been almost thirty below zero, if you can imagine. I’d like to know why the hell my Scottish ancestors picked this country to move to instead of somewhere warm like California.”

  Ramirez smiled. He looked out the window. Hundreds of tourists jammed the sidewalks, snapping photographs, dropping coins at the feet of street musicians. A sixty-degree difference in temperature between the two countries was astonishing, but he could imagine it all too well. When he visited Ottawa on police business, he thought his brain would seize when he stepped out of the plane into the cold.

  “How is Beatriz adjusting to her new home?” Ramirez had helped clear the way for the child’s adoption, although he bent a few rules along the way.

  “Already improving, thanks. And the really good news is that she won’t need a heart transplant, just a new valve. That’s still major surgery, but not as major—she won’t have the rejection issues. She may need to be on blood thinners, but Alex says she’ll be running around in no time at all.”

  “I’m very happy to hear it,” Ramirez said. “And Hector will be too.” Apiro had accompanied the child from Havana on the medical transport in January.

  “I’m sorry to bother you with this, Ricardo, but Beatriz is the reason I called. We’re in a bit of a predicament.” Jones explained the problems with the Canadian adoption process.

  “Why would they send her back here?” said Ramirez, surprised. “There’s no one to care for her.”

  “I know. I can’t bear the idea of her being in an orphanage again.” Jones was on the verge of tears. “And Alex is dead set against it. But if we can’t stop it from happening—worst-case scenario—can you help us to find her a good home?”

  “Don’t worry, Celia. I’ll make sure of it.” Although Ramirez wasn’t sure how. No family he knew could easily afford another mouth to feed.

  “Oh, thank you. That means the world to me.” Jones paused for a moment, composing herself. “I’m sorry; I didn’t even ask how you were,” she said, her voice hoarse with emotion. “How are things? Are you busy?”

  “Very,” said Ramirez. He told her about the two deaths. “A third woman,” he added, looking at the dead woman’s ghost, “seems to be missing. Another prostitute.”

  “That’s terrible,” Jones said. “We’ve had murders like that in Canada too. There’s a trial going on right now in British Columbia. A pig farmer named Willie Pickton murdered dozens of women. They think he fed his victims to his pigs. I never thought of it as something you’d have to worry about in Cuba, not with all the police you have around.”

  Ramirez shook his head. “Such women are always vulnerable.”

  “I’m sure racism is a big factor up here. It’s not like no one noticed—­all these women were reported missing by their families. But the police put their heads in the sand because they were Aboriginal and quite a few were drug addicts or hookers. Charlie Pike’s on a task force that’s looking into some of the murders in Ontario and Manitoba, where it looks like it could be the same killer. In fact, he’s not far from here right now, investigating another one. We call him the Highway Strangler. The killer, I mean. He leaves his victims by the side of the road and then vanishes into thin air.”

  “As does ours. It’s very sad to know that there are such vicious men in this world.” Ramirez glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry, I should get back to work, Celia. Things are very busy. Please keep me posted about Beatriz, will you?”

  “Absolutely, Ricardo. And thanks again.”

  29

  Pauley Oshig’s bedroom was dark, the lopsided curtains pulled tight. Where there should have been an overhead light fixture, wires dangled from the ceiling. The walls were speckled like a killdeer’s egg with black mould. The room was the size of a jail cell. It was so small that Charlie Pike was surprised the boys didn’t sleep standing up.

  Bill Wabigoon was right, thought Pike. There was never enough money in a band council’s budget for repairs, much less new housing, particularly with the long waiting lists of C-31s who wanted to live on the reserve. These were band members who’d either lost their official Indian status because they’d married a white man or were born to a woman who had, then applied to get it back when Bill C-31 changed the law. Pike knew all about it.

  He let his eyes adjust to the dark.

  There were some drawings tacked up on the walls, but he saw none of the posters of girls that boys this age liked. No hockey sticks, no skates. There was a bunk bed against one wall. Both bunks were messy, with faded, tangled sheets. A twin bed was pushed against the other wall.

  The only light in the room came from the flickering monitor of an old computer on a small table jammed beside the twin bed, the resolution so low the screen moved in waves. Pauley Oshig sat on a ric
kety chair, his fingers moving rapidly on the keyboard. He was small for his age and thin. Pike glanced at the computer game he was playing—Grand Theft Auto.

  “How do you like that?” Pike asked, sitting on the edge of the twin bed.

  The boy shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess. A bunch of Loonies took over the city. I’m being chased by a cophead.”

  Pike smiled. “I guess I’m a cophead too. My name is Charlie. I work with a police force down south. I need to ask you some questions about that woman’s body you found yesterday. Is that okay with you?”

  The boy turned to look at Pike. His face reflected the blue light from the monitor. It made him look like something in an aquarium. “Where’s your gun?”

  “I didn’t think I needed it.”

  A long silence before the boy spoke. “Bet you’re glad you have one, though. Easier than running people over with cars.”

  “Pardon?”

  “In this game”—the boy nodded towards the screen—“I have to kill people by running over them. It’s a lot harder than shooting them. They keep running away.”

  Sheldon was right, thought Pike. The boy was different. Pike looked at the drawings on the walls. Pencil drawings of crows, finely detailed. “Did you do those?” he asked.

  The boy nodded.

  “They’re pretty good,” said Pike.

  “Do you like crows?”

  “Smart birds.”

  “I have to chase them off the road sometimes to make sure they don’t get hit by cars,” said Pauley. “If they’re so smart, why do they walk everywhere? Why don’t they fly away when a car comes? They’re going to get run over.”

  “I don’t know,” said Pike. “But I’m sure they have their reasons.” He took a deep breath. He wasn’t quite sure where to start with this boy. “Pauley, like I said, I need to ask you some questions. You can have your auntie in here if you want. And you don’t have to talk to me at all, if you don’t want to. It’s up to you.”