Seven Days Dead (9 page)

Louwagie glances up. He sees that Maddy Orrock has moved off several yards. She is engaged now in a staring contest with Roadcap, who returns her steady gaze without blinking. Corporal Louwagie walks over to her, then past her, then turns to virtually whisper in her ear. He’s secretly fantasizing about what it might be like to make love to a woman so tall who is, for him, quite young. Then he wonders what it might be like to make love to a woman so rich. And what it might be like to make love to any woman again. It’s been a while. Such thoughts wing past him before he asks, “Miss Orrock, do you know this man?”

“What does he want?” She also whispers.

She possesses the same internal authority her father possessed.

“Miss, he has information about Reverend Simon Lescavage. Do you know him, this man?”

“His father,” she says, then finally breaks from her spell and looks at the Mountie rather than at Roadcap. “A long time ago, his father murdered my mother.”

Ten seconds tick by before Louwagie even thinks to react. He says, “Bugger,” and walks over to the man from Dark Harbour to lead him to the dead body of one of the town’s many pastors. He knows that if the town has an overabundance of professions, they are, in no particular order, layabouts, fishermen, and clergy, but apparently the latter group has just been diminished by one. He’s thinking also that if Maddy Orrock’s mother was slain by Aaron Roadcap’s dad, then a little bad blood might flow between them. But he doesn’t think it’s worthwhile to ask about that on the drive up to the Whistle, nor does he believe that it serves a useful purpose to revisit the bad blood of the past. He’s mulling things over and advising himself to keep his mouth shut for now when they climb into the squad car, yet the moment the doors slam shut, Louwagie blurts out, in a casual tone that suggests his question has no bearing on anything, “Did your father go to prison, sir?”

The man seems nonplussed, not in the least put out by the question. “As a matter of fact, he did. Why do you ask?”

“Is he out now?” If a convicted killer is living on the island and a murder has taken place, he might wrap this crime up in no time flat.

Aaron Roadcap deflates that ambition. “No, sir. My father never got out. He died in prison.”

Corporal Louwagie murmurs that he’s sorry. He doesn’t know what to say. He starts up the car. Sadness, he’s thinking, lies all around. Some days it’s inescapable. Inside, outside, on the skin, under it. He’s hoping that he will be able to cope, with both the sadness to come, and with what he must now see—the entrails of the poor Reverend Lescavage spilled upon the morning’s sodden earth, high above the sea. Driving up to the Whistle, he’s thinking less about the crime on his doorstep than about the woman, the rich one, the tall drink of water, and he does feel sorry for her, for losing her father, but he really can’t help his idle mind. He ponders again what it might be like to kiss and touch someone like her, that tall, that rich, or even, he admits to himself, what it might be like to kiss and touch someone not
like
her, but her.

*   *   *

Over the hump of the Whistle, after its long climb, the road descends a short distance to butt up against a homemade, yet well-made, wooden barricade. After that, the drop is sheer off the towering cliff into the bright blue bay below. Clouds are clearing out nicely and the sea is continuing to settle. Having initially pulled over to the side, Louwagie changes his mind. He performs a three-point turn, switching off the motor only when the Dodge is pointed straight back uphill. A clever move, to prepare for a quick getaway, as though he knows what to do at this place. He and his witness disembark.

“Come here often, do you?” Aaron Roadcap kids him, and slams the side door shut.

“Not if I can help it.”

In a sense, the island is dry, as no bars exist. Yet the government-run liquor store sells more booze than any in all of New Brunswick. This despite an impossibly small population. So the people themselves are not dry, they simply choose to drink in their own places, be it in their homes, or on their boats, or out here in the wild. The Whistle is a favorite hangout. On any given summer evening, folks gather in numbers. A barrier has been built to prevent the most inebriated from tumbling over the ledge, probably laughing all the way to the ground and creating a thud so distant as to be silent, unnoticed. So the regulars look out for one another. Anyone becoming too tipsy is required to stand on the safe side of the barrier, while only the more sober among them may enjoy a front-row seat to observe the setting sun. The vantage is due west, and from this height the view is all that it’s cracked up to be in the tourist brochures. West lies the continent, and between that huge landmass and this mere dot of one, various species of whale—humpback and minke, finback and right whales, who breed here—break the Bay of Fundy’s glimmering surface. All come for the nutrients carried in on a tide so powerful that the volume of water every twelve and a half hours all but equals the daily flow of every river on the planet. No surprise, then, that even lost and wandering orcas from the Pacific have found their way to this feeding ground.

“Do you?” the cop inquires of Roadcap. They haven’t shared a word for over a minute, both losing themselves in the vista, so he adds, “Come here often?”

“I’m not a drinking man. Once in a while I drop by for the stories.”

Louwagie makes a sound, as though wishing he could do the same. Cops aren’t welcome. “So which way?” the officer asks.

They follow a trail along the ridge, not one that’s well known, as it’s hazardous to tourists with their kids in tow, but the most dedicated and athletic of hikers can follow it across the Bishop. The policeman can scarcely believe that this man passed through here at night, in a storm, with scant, if any, moonlight, although he learned that Roadcap did carry a flashlight.

“Still,” the officer points out, “dangerous.”

“Not if you’re used to it. Not if you know it well.”

“No. Still dangerous.”

On second thought, the man agrees. Yet he knows the trail intimately, and has the sense to be careful even in daylight. They tramp across the Bishop until he encounters what he believes to be the camping area for a group of men and women the night before.

“How did you see them here if they were sleeping in the dark?”

“I heard them. They didn’t come here to sleep.”

“I see. How do you know what they came here for?”

“I don’t. But in the dark, over the storm, they had to shout to communicate.”

In departing, the unknown strangers left little trace of their trespass. Grass lies matted in patches where tents were pitched, and the remains of a small cooking fire demonstrates that it was never lit for long. A near-impossible task in the torrential rain. Neophyte campers. Today they are probably drying out somewhere. A broken tent peg was left behind, and Roadcap points out where another is stuck in rock, unwilling to be extracted.

“And you have no idea who they were or why they were here?”

“How should I know? They weren’t my people.”

To the Mountie’s mind, that doesn’t sound like an honest answer, but for now he doesn’t push him. Instead, they amble on across the meadows and into the woods of Ashburton Head. Corporal Louwagie, in this pastoral, can forget from one moment to the next the purpose of this trek, and what awaits him. He is hardly paying attention when his guide pipes up, “There.” And the cop stops walking and cranes his neck up.

There.

He was supposed to prepare himself. But how does he prepare for this?

A shock.

Louwagie is overcome by a maze of reactions, both familiar and strange, immediate and distant. As if he himself has fallen away from here and into a dream. He feels both dizzy and ill, which he can handle, but he’s also suddenly disoriented, and Louwagie is not confident he can deal with that part. Or with any of this. As though a physical switch has been flicked in his brain, admitting the dreaded serum of depression and entanglement, confusion and remorse, that has nagged him for much of his career. His guide kindly waits and makes no comment while he vomits over a cairn of stones probably placed there decades ago by travelers who wanted to express their appreciation of the surrounds and to welcome future lovers of nature. Wade Louwagie wipes the foul spillage from his lips on the back of his hand, then coughs more up, then rubs the hand through the grass. When he thinks he’s done, he goes back and has another good look, but it’s as though he can’t see what is plainly before his eyes. Rather, he’s witnessing what resides at the bottom of his mind like a fermenting rot. Another time and place is evoked, another foul brutality he wishes he’d never seen. Then he stumbles forward and challenges himself to do his job, to take a hard look.

He does so. He takes a hard look. And remains standing. Though he wobbles.

The Reverend Simon Lescavage’s body is strapped with twine to the bark of a dead tree, one burned by a lightning stroke perhaps a decade previously. Lightning has struck twice in the same place, for the man’s stomach has burst and emptied as though scorched by a bolt, the remains of his intestines and organs a dire and foul mess upon the ground. Birds hunker in the trees, waiting to resume their morning feast. The corpse shows no outward signs of further violation, although what’s been done to him is bestial. What killed him was this devouring—no kind bullet to the head or slash of the man’s throat. He endured an agony, forsaken by life and any sense of decent humanity before death mercifully took him.

No evidence presents itself. No weapon has been left behind, and if anyone tossed it over the cliff, it’s not likely to be located. The only possible suspect is the man who has led him here. That fellow knows the way in like no other, and the way back out again. Which can’t be said of too many people, especially when a storm at night increases the challenges.

“Would you mind putting your raincoat on, sir?”

“Excuse me?”

“Humor me.”

Roadcap does so. The officer examines it quite closely, making no attempt to conceal his suspicion.

“Anything?” Roadcap asks.

“Nothing,” Louwagie admits. “Of course, in that storm, that rain, that deluge, it was like walking through a car wash several miles long. I can’t expect to see blood or guts or anything of that nature even if you are the guilty party. You see my dilemma.”

“I suppose I do.”

The officer knows he should have asked before they left North Head, but he asks him now. “Do you have any knives on you, sir?”

“I never carry more than one,” Roadcap says.

“Why carry one at all?”

“I harvest dulse for a living.”

“So you don’t leave home without it, huh?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Is it on you now?”

“Yup.”

Their mutual stare goes on a short while.

“May I have it, sir?”

“Will I get it back?”

“May I have it, sir?”

Roadcap hesitates, then opens his raincoat and reaches around to the side of his waist under the tail of his shirt. He extracts a knife of some heft and length—the blade runs to six, six and a half inches—and passes it to the policeman properly, the handle offered first.

“Thank you. I’m taking this in as evidence.”

“That’s not evidence.”

“Our experts will decide on that.”

“You don’t have experts,” Roadcap scoffs. Then he adds, “Not on this island.”

“They can travel. Purely precautionary, sir. You understand.”

Roadcap declines to reply, looking away and out to sea through the trees.

“Do you carry a gun?” Louwagie challenges him.

The man stares back at him, then asks, “Are you going to search me?”

“Only if I feel the need. Any guns?”

“Nope,” Roadcap responds.

“Now we have a problem,” Louwagie shares with him.

“What’s that?”

“We can’t leave the corpse like this. The carrion will get at it while we’re gone. They already have. I don’t know if there are any relatives. But just in case, we want to protect the eyes at least.”

“Do you want me to walk into town again for help?”

“I have my phone.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I can’t leave the scene here. But the undertaker, my partner, our experts who will probably fly in, on account of the outdoor circumstances they will need to be guided here. It’s not going to be easy, either examining the body here or when we carry it out. So.”

“So,” Roadcap repeats.

“Could I ask you to walk back to the Whistle, then guide these other people here?”

“I’m not saying no, but isn’t that a lot to ask of somebody under suspicion?”

“It sure is,” Louwagie agrees. “But maybe not so much to ask of an innocent man.” He’s a handsome man, Louwagie notes. That’s always something to overcome. People, himself included, are always less suspicious of the handsome or the pretty. He warns himself to be vigilant. The guy is also an intelligent man, and that’s the more difficult hurdle here.

“Or of a man, guilty or innocent,” Roadcap interjects, “who wants to pass himself off as innocent.”

Louwagie can’t dispute that. Still, he persists. “Will you help me out here, sir? I can ask people to come on their own, but it’ll slow down our procedures.”

“Sure,” Roadcap says without hesitating further. “Why not? I’d do it for anybody, but Simon Lescavage was someone I liked. You see? I’m not doing it to indicate my innocence. I don’t care what you think of me. I’m doing it for him.”

If the man is trying to prove his innocence, Louwagie grants that he’s doing a good job. He doesn’t seem to be acting as a guilty man might, at least according to his own speculations. In any case, he is not free to trust him on this, he just needs him to do this one huge favor.

The man strikes off, back to the Whistle, and before Louwagie gets on the phone to call for help, he studies the body again. He can scarcely bear a glance, yet sticks with it and observes the man’s face. The wide-open eyes. The gaping mouth, as though he’s been caught in mid-scream. His hair is cut short. Strands are flattened by the wind and rain against his scalp, and what hits the corporal then is what has felt odd from the moment of his arrival. The stark eyes, the flat hair, the slack jaw—it’s as though he’s not looking at the man he knew as Reverend Lescavage, or even at his corpse. For some reason, out here on the edge of this field, it feels as though he’s looking at his skeletal remains. At his skull. As though the man’s been dead for a week. The pestering birds may have created that effect, but hanging on a tree trunk that way, he more closely resembles a scarecrow than a man. A thought that both creeps the officer out and causes him to feel particularly unnerved.