“I think that’s all, Finn,” Thomson said. “I think we’ve pretty well covered everything we need to know. Mrs. Miller, thank you so much for coming in with Finn. Constable McKitrick will drive you home now.”
“You’ll look for Sadie?” Finn said hopefully. He turned to Elliot and said, “You said you would, remember? You promised.”
“I will, Finn,” Elliot said. He glanced uneasily at Thomson. “I promise.”
“Mrs. Miller, Finn?” Thomson said. “If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about this for a bit. Don’t tell your neighbours or- especially you, Finn-your friends. Let’s consider this our secret for a while, until we figure out what’s going on. It wouldn’t do for rumours to be circulating about something that may well be… well, nothing.”
“
“Very likely it’s a hunter’s bag, Mrs. Miller,” he replied calmly. “But you know how these stories grow in small towns. Like I said, I’d appreciate it if you folks would just keep it under your hat for a little bit. I will personally call you when we know for sure what’s going on.”
After Elliot had left to drive Finn and Anne home, Thomson stared thoughtfully at the hockey bag for a long moment. Then he put the plastic gloves back on and reexamined the contents. The knives and the hammer had obviously been used to achieve a violent end. If it hadn’t been for the presence of the hammers, he might have considered the possibility that they’d belonged to a hunter, and that the blood was animal’s blood, not human blood. There was hair on the head of the hammer and thin matted clumps of it where the base of the knife blade met the handle.
Thomson lifted the bound typescript from the bottom of the bag and read the first few pages. It was obviously the document that Billy Lightning had told them about, Professor Phenius Osborne’s translation from the original French that he claimed had been stolen from his father’s desk by Richard Weal after Weal had murdered him. Except it couldn’t be Richard Weal, since Weal had apparently committed suicide months before the murder, according to the Toronto police.
Which left Billy Lightning as the only link between the bag and its contents and-very likely-the recent events in Gyles Point.
Whatever else was true, the fact that the bag had been found at Spirit Rock meant that its owner had to be in the vicinity. Thomson sighed- his gut told him that Billy Lightning was no murderer, and he tended to trust his gut in cases like this. But facts were facts, and facts trumped gut feelings when it came to him doing his job.
He considered calling Bill Lefferts, the senior officer over at the Gyles Point detachment, to let him know what they’d found, but he told himself that the situation was still unfolding and he had more questions that needed answering before bringing anyone else into the mix.
Thomson reminded himself to commend McKitrick on having found the bag-or, if not actually having found it, at least having identified and brought it in. He had been checking out the area based on something he’d seen, so if there was to be any credit given, it was rightfully Elliot’s.
As soon as Elliot was back from the Miller house, they’d take another run out to the Gold Nugget to talk to Billy Lightning. Thomson hoped that the professor would be cooperative, because under the circumstances, if he wasn’t, it wasn’t going to go well for any of them, least of all for Billy Lightning.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Night falls swiftly in Parr’s Landing in late October. The sunlight is there, then it’s gone.
It’s not that night comes unannounced, but rather that the announcements themselves manifest in a rapid sequence of shifting light and temperature fluctuations that might be missed by someone not born and bred in the north country. By late afternoon, the sky is already darkening to orange and pale violet, with bands of dark blue and black hunkering down behind the line of trees and cliffs ringing Bradley Lake and Spirit Rock, and the biting, hyperborean wind blowing in off Lake Superior chills everything in its path.
At night, Parr’s Landing breathes in its population and doesn’t exhale them until the morning.
Morgan Parr, who was used to Toronto’s perpetual neon twilight, found the sudden darkness both intimidating and oddly enchanting.
She’d waited for Finn at lunch, and was surprised by how much she missed him when he didn’t show up. After school was over, she walked from Matthew Browning over to the primary school in the hopes of finding Finn and walking home with him, but he wasn’t among the crowd of kids milling about after the bell.
Disappointed, she walked home alone, aware of the change in the light even at four-thirty in the afternoon.
At Parr House, she found the impossibly thin Parr’s Landing phone book in a drawer of the marquetry cabinet in the foyer and looked up Finn’s phone number. There was only one “Miller” in the book, an “H” on Childs Drive. She copied down the address on the small yellow pad of paper by the telephone and pocketed it, then went upstairs to do some homework. By dinnertime, it was nearly full dark.
As she descended the staircase from the upper hallway, Morgan noted that even with the night pressing against the other side, the baronial stained glass windows in the foyer seemed to catch and hold whatever light existed, seeming to burn with a singular lambency all their own, even at night. At Parr House, it seemed to Morgan, even the encroaching darkness was subject to the whims of Adeline Parr.
For once, dinner around the long dining table was more or less civil. Adeline seemed sanguine, as though her excoriation of her son and daughter-in-law the previous night had fed some ravenous private hunger, filling her up and leaving her full and bloated. She asked perfunctory questions of Morgan, easy-to-answer questions about school and how she liked the town. Morgan noticed that Adeline didn’t raise the topic of Finnegan Miller, nor did she ask if Morgan had met any new friends. Morgan doubted this was accidental, but far from being disappointed by her grandmother’s lack of curiosity about her social life, Morgan was relieved by it. It meant at least one fight was not going to break out again over dinner.
For his part, Jeremy seemed entirely lost in his thoughts. Judging by his face, Morgan guessed they weren’t very happy thoughts. Morgan worried about him. She wasn’t sure what exactly had happened to Jeremy growing up here-the specifics had never been discussed with her, nor did she have any indication that questions about his past at Parr House would be welcomed by her uncle-but she sensed that they had not been easy years.
Her mother, on the other hand, seemed to be in a genuinely good mood for the first time in weeks, certainly since they’d arrived in town. Christina smiled encouragingly at her daughter as she answered Adeline’s questions about her day, adding a few comments of her own-comments that Adeline, for once, neither disputed nor mocked. Morgan dared to hope that the evening might well pass without any sort of incident, but it was early yet.
“I met someone very interesting today,” Christina said brightly to Jeremy. “At the Pear Tree. A professor, from Michigan.
“A professor? Really?” Jeremy brightened. “In Parr’s Landing? What on earth was he doing here?”
“He didn’t say, really,” Christina said thoughtfully. “He mentioned something about his father passing away. His father worked here some years ago. He’s Native,” she added. “He knew all about the Landing and the Wendigo legend. It was fascinating.”
“An
“What was his name?” Jeremy asked, desperate to keep the conversation between his mother and his sister- in-law from going in the direction it was most certainly headed. “Did he say where he taught?”
Christina smiled gratefully at Jeremy. Before Adeline could say anything else, she said, “He said his name is William Lightning. He teaches at Grantham University. It’s somewhere in Michigan. I think he told me where, but I don’t remember.”
Both Christina and Jeremy expected another sharp rebuke from Adeline-were braced for it, in fact. When she said nothing, they looked to the head of the table. The colour had drained from Adeline’s face.
