“The detachment commander, yes. Staff Sergeant Moreland.”
“He doesn’t look happy.”
“I don’t think he is.”
“You said DeMers is three months away from retirement?”
“Yes.”
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
“How long have you been a constable?” I said. I couldn’t help thinking, if I were twenty years younger, or even ten years, and I was still on the force, and this woman was my partner-how would I handle it? In eight years as a cop in Detroit, I never had a female partner.
“Five years,” she said. “Do we really need to talk about this?”
“Okay,” I said. “I just have one more question for you.”
“What’s that?”
“I know how tough it can be for women cops. I don’t imagine it’s changed much.”
“And your question is?”
“Getting stuck way up here, miles from anywhere, is it a test or a punishment?”
She looked at me. If she was going to answer, she didn’t get the chance. The door swung open and DeMers came back into the room. His knees were still wet.
“All right,” he said as he sat down. “All right.” He took off his glasses and went into his whole cleaning routine again. If he were my partner, he’d get to do that about three or four times before I grabbed the damned glasses and broke them in two. “Here’s where we are. We were already searching for some trace of those missing men. The Mounties were helping us out. Now that we have the vehicle, we’ll take it over to the main detachment in Timmins, see what they can come up with. Of course, we already know a couple of things they’re gonna find, don’t we?”
He paused and looked at both of us.
“They’ll find a lot of shattered glass,” he said. “Some blood. They’ll find the wallets, which might be the most important piece of evidence. But, of course, they’ll all be moved and they’ll have a new set of fingerprints on them. That’s gonna make their job a hell of a lot harder.”
He stopped again. The lights buzzed above our heads. I wondered if anyone was watching us through the two-way mirror.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I asked you to go back to Michigan. Instead of doing that, you guys headed right over to the Constance Lake Reserve. You wanna start by explaining that one?”
“I thought I saw a young Indian at the lodge,” I said. “I thought he might know something that could help us. Constance Lake is the nearest reserve, so I figured that’s where we’d find him.”
“Did you?”
“No, he wasn’t there.”
“Have you ever been on the reserve before today?”
“No, of course not.”
“You have no connection to anyone there.”
“No,” I said. “How could I?”
“And you, Mr. LeBlanc? You haven’t said anything yet. Do you have any connection to anyone on the Constance Lake Reserve?”
“No,” Vinnie said. He sat there with arms folded across his chest.
“You live on a reservation in Michigan, don’t you?”
“No.”
DeMers looked a little surprised. “Even so, you felt comfortable trying to contact this young Indian Mr. McKnight said he saw at the lodge.”
“I saw him, too.”
“So you went to find him, but he wasn’t there. Then you left.”
“Yes.”
“Who spotted the vehicle?”
“I did,” Vinnie said.
“That’s pretty amazing. The vehicle was deep in the woods.”
“Maybe thirty or forty feet,” Vinnie said. “I happened to be looking out the window.”
DeMers turned to his partner. “I still think it’s amazing,” he said. “Don’t you?”
She thought about it for a moment, or at least pretended to. “I think it’s safe to say it was amazing, yes.”
“I know I wouldn’t have spotted that vehicle,” DeMers said. “Not in a million years. Now, if I knew to look for it, that would be a different story.”
“We didn’t know it was there,” I said. “You don’t even have to take our word for it. Just think about it.”
“The fact that you broke into the vehicle makes me wonder,” he said. “Maybe you were trying to retrieve something important.”
“And then we called you,” I said. “Instead of just leaving.”
“You knew it would be found eventually. Why not just call it in and get it over with?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“That you either had a very good reason to find that vehicle and break into it. Or else you were so lucky you just happened to stumble over it, and so stupid that you’d intentionally compromise a crime scene. Which is it?”
“I don’t know about lucky,” I said, “but we’ll cop a plea on stupid.”
Vinnie gave me a quick look. He kept his arms folded.
“Those men left the lodge five days ago,” DeMers said. “Instead of going home, they did God knows what, and their empty van ends up ditched in the woods, just outside the reserve. Which, as you know, is most definitely not on the way to anywhere. Certainly not on the way home. So you tell me. What do you think happened?”
“One of those men is my brother,” Vinnie said.
I recognized the tone of voice. Please no, I thought. This would be a bad time to run out of fuse again.
“You got the Mounties helping you now?” Vinnie went on. “It’s about time. Why don’t you get out there, too? Instead of asking us all these stupid questions.”
“Vinnie, knock it off.”
“Why don’t you go change your pants,” he said. “And then get out there and look for them.”
That was enough for DeMers. He stood up and told us to do the same. Then he led us out of the conference room and deep into the back of the building. There were three holding cells there, all of them empty. The doors were open. He showed us into the first of the cells and slammed the door shut behind us.
“Are we officially charged?” I said.
“How does obstruction of justice sound?” he said.
“You didn’t Mirandize us yet. You should have done that before asking us all those questions.”
He came back to the bars and put his face six inches from mine. I could see my reflection in his glasses. I could smell his aftershave. “First of all,” he said, “we’re in Canada. They call it the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Second of all-”
“What is it?”
He put his hands on the bars. Once again, just when I expected him to explode, he surprised me. “You guys are making this really hard,” he said. “Don’t you see that?”
I didn’t say anything.
“We’re trying to find these guys, eh? We’re trying to do our jobs. Why can’t you just let us do that?”
I was about to answer him, but he cut me off.
“You think that helps us? Breaking into the van and messing everything up? For God’s sake, guys. Didn’t I tell you to go home?”
“Constable-”
“You can call me Claude, all right? Will you do that?”
I hesitated. “Claude-”
“We’re on the same side, eh? All of us, including my partner. We’re just trying to find those men.”
