“Why Sudbury?” I finally said.
“There’ll be officers there from her old Hearst detachment. Some of the officers from Toronto. Some of the Mounties. Sudbury’s sort of right in the middle.”
“Can Vinnie come, too?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. He gave Vinnie a look, then did a double take when he saw the state of Vinnie’s face. “Did you get in another fight or something?”
“Who, me?” Vinnie said. “Why do you say that?”
“I probably don’t want to know. Anyway, I’m sorry, I think he just wants you there for the service…Then he wants to speak to you for a while afterward.”
“It’s okay,” Vinnie said. “You go for both of us.”
“My suit,” I said. “It’s in my cabin.” It was the last place I wanted to be, even for a second.
“I’ll get it,” Vinnie said. “You go get cleaned up. You haven’t shaved in two days.”
Thirty minutes later, I was wearing my only suit, my neck scraped raw by a dull razor. I was sitting in the passenger’s seat of Chief Roy Maven’s unmarked squad car. He was barreling down M-28 at a speed that would have made even me look like the minister’s mother on her way to the euchre club. He hadn’t said another word to me since we left Paradise.
“What, is it about two hundred miles to Sudbury?” I said.
“Not quite that.”
“When did Moreland call you?”
“Yesterday.”
I knew that Maven and Moreland had talked to each other in the past. They had already bonded over the one thing they had in common-a certain man from Paradise who kept showing up in the general vicinity of trouble. I wasn’t sure that Moreland had ever stopped blaming me for at least some of it. With Maven, I didn’t have to wonder.
“What else did he say?” I asked.
“He didn’t say much else to me. I think he’s saving that for you.”
Maven came up behind a camper, pulled into the left lane, and left it in the dust. He hit I-75, took that north to the International Bridge. When we got to Canadian customs, things got a little interesting. The woman in the booth wasn’t accustomed to police officers from the States telling her why she could save her questions. Eventually, Maven had to step out of the car, go into the little shack to speak to someone else in charge. When he got back behind the wheel, he was ready to tear someone’s head off.
“Moreland left specific goddamned instructions to let us through without delay,” he said as he gunned it back to full speed. “How the hell that could be so hard to understand is beyond me.”
He looked at his watch as he hit the traffic in Soo, Ontario. He swore at a few drivers before he finally turned his flashers on. It’s funny how an unmarked car suddenly makes you pay attention when the headlights and all the hidden auxiliary lights start dancing back and forth.
“Technically not kosher for me to do this in Canada,” he said, “but I’d like to see them try to stop me.”
I would have felt sorry for anyone who did. Soon we were out of the city and on the King’s Highway, heading due east. We passed through the Garden River First Nation. I had come to a healing ceremony here with Vinnie, once upon a time. We drove through Bruce Mines and Thessalon, and as we got closer to Blind River I could feel the lump in my throat. This was the way to Natalie’s house, the way I had driven so many times, back and forth. When the relationship was young and we were both feeling our way through it. God damn, all the hours on this very road, looking forward to seeing her again. Coming home happy. Or coming home wondering if this thing would ever work out.
We passed the turnoff for McKnight Road. It had always felt like a lucky charm to me, seeing that sign. If Maven noticed the name, he didn’t say anything.
Through Iron Bridge, over the Mississagi River. This was getting harder for me. I wanted to close my eyes and not see these places again.
Finally, we drove through Blind River. The house was a mile east of town.
“You all right?” he said. It must have been pretty obvious.
“This was her town.”
“I’m sorry. There’s no other way to get there.”
“I know. It’s all right.”
I couldn’t help watching for her driveway, looking through the trees, just to see the house one more time. When we were past it, I looked out the window in the opposite direction. I watched the North Channel rolling by us, the green water under the dull gray sky.
Algoma Mills, Serpent River, Cutler, Sheddon Township, Walford, Victoria. A string of small Canadian towns, with miles and miles of empty road between them. The trees got heavier as we left the water and headed toward Sudbury. We’d been on the road almost four hours now, with Maven driving like a speed demon. Finally, we could see the Superstack rising high above the horizon, which could only mean that Sudbury was just ahead.
We started to see the nickel mines, the desolate piles of white ore that made the place look like something on the face of the moon. As we got closer, the Superstack loomed over a thousand feet above us, this giant chimney that fed the sulfur gases to the winds. There was supposedly a lot of environmental reclamation going on around here, a lot of great places to live now, especially around Lake Ramsey, but I was in no mood to forgive the place today. It just seemed like the strangest place in the world to say goodbye to Natalie.
“You realize she’s not going to be here,” Maven said, as if he were reading my mind. “I mean to say…with the investigation still underway…”
“Her body, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are they doing this today?”
“Well, they’re not exactly sure when they’ll be able to put her to rest. With an open case like this, not to mention having two different countries involved…it could take weeks. So they decided to go ahead and have the service.”
“I understand.”
“They’re going to take her back to Hearst, eventually. They’ll bury her there.”
“Okay.”
“Like I said, though…Sudbury’s the one place everybody can get to today.”
“Why are you doing this?” I said.
“I told you. Moreland asked me.”
“No matter what he said, you could have said no. I could have come up here by myself.”
“He seemed to think that would be a bad idea. He wanted me with you.”
It still wasn’t adding up for me, but I let it go. I kept my mouth shut while Maven drove through town, looking for wherever we were supposed to be. He was about ready to blow a gasket for the second time that day when we finally found it. It was a funeral chapel on the east side of town, just past the rail yards.
A funeral chapel. Where they had funerals, although this one would be with no coffin. Yet one more thing to hit me between the eyes, just when I felt like I might be on top of things. From one second to the next, I wasn’t sure I could do this. I wasn’t sure that I could even get out of the car and walk into this place.
There were dozens of police vehicles parked outside, from both the Ontario Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted. Maven parked the car. We got out.
“Are you ready?” Maven said to me.
“No.”
“Would you like to stay out here for a moment, get some air?”
“Yes, one minute.”
I turned away. I walked to the far side of the lot, stood there looking out past a row of houses at the trains in the yard. Nothing was moving.
Okay, I told myself. Go do this. Do it for Natalie.
I went back to Maven, gave him a nod. Nothing else. He went to the front door and opened it for me.
When we stepped inside, I saw fifty, maybe sixty uniforms. Mostly men, a few women. They were all in full dress, the OPP in their blues, the Mounties in their reds. Shoes shined bright, white gloves. Some of them were
