Red Bear glanced at him in the mirror.
“I will consult the spirits.”
“Consult the spirits, hell. Don’t you get it? She talks to the cops, I go away to Millhaven again. You know how long they stuck me in solitary, man?”
“Forty-eight days. You told me already.”
“Yeah, well, you try doing forty-eight days in that fucking hellhole. See how long you keep your cool, then. I want to plug that bitch. Put her away, man. She cannot be walking the earth.”
“I will consult the spirits, Leon.”
“We already got Kevin locked up. We could do a sacrifice, man. A double sacrifice. That’s what we should do. Make sure we get this right.”
“We will do a sacrifice, when the time is right.”
“So let’s do it, man. Get those spirits working for us big time. Let’s get it done.”
Red Bear put aside his brush and picked up a pump bottle. He sprayed something into his palm and rubbed his hands together. Then he patted them over his hair. He picked up the brush again.
“I have already explained to you. I cannot perform a sacrifice until the moon is waxing. Right now it is still waning. Do a sacrifice while the moon is waning and the entity will control you. That is not what we want.”
“What I want is one dead redhead.”
Red Bear turned to him. Those eyes of his. Sometimes they caught the light in a certain way and it was like being stared at by a corpse.
“Whose fault is it she’s alive?”
“That’s not my fault. It’s that fucking gun, man. I told you. I pumped two of those motherfucking bullets into Toof’s head and he wouldn’t even lie down. Guy’s still up and around and yakkin’ away. Had to go at him with my Louisville Slugger. If I’d a known, I’d a put five in her head, stedda one, man. It’s not my fault. I mean, where in the fuck have I sinned?”
Red Bear turned back to the mirror.
“Try not to panic, Leon. I will consult the spirits.”
41
LISE DELORME HAD BEEN spending an awful lot of time chasing down a lead that seemed certain to propel her face-first into a dead end. According to Jerry Commanda, the strange hieroglyphics on the walls of the cave behind Nishinabe Falls had nothing to do with Ojibwa Indians. So Delorme had followed his advice and called Frank Izzard at the OPP’s behavioural sciences unit, then faxed him a photograph of the markings.
Delorme had googled Izzard on the Internet before calling him. Izzard was a cop with an advanced degree in psychology and a particular interest in Satanism and other esoteric practices that have attracted serial killers over the past few decades. His papers on the subject had appeared in the Annals of Forensic Psychology and he had written a widely respected book-length study of Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker who had terrorized Los Angeles twenty years previously. Just from her reading on the Internet, Delorme had discovered that Satanism was far more widespread among serial killers than she had supposed.
“Most of them don’t get into it in any organized way,” Izzard told her on the phone. “They dabble. They go into it with about as much devotion as the average housewife gives her yoga philosophy.”
“I guess it makes sense they’d be interested in anything that appears to condone the evil things they do.”
“Oh, their interest isn’t ethical. Even with Ramirez. They’re not looking for permission from a supernatural being. When a person seething with rage and lust starts playing with Satanic rituals—that is to say, rituals designed to bring Satan or his helpers into your apartment—what happens is they invoke not some supernatural being but an embodiment of their own blackest desires. Imagine a being composed of pure lust and rage—no conscience, no morals, no restraints …”
“Pretty hideous,” Delorme said.
“And it’s going to be powerful. For a loser who is otherwise close to nonfunctioning, it’s going to be the most powerful experience of his life. With Ramirez—and maybe with your guy, too—what can happen is a borderline personality topples over the edge and becomes an outright psychopath.”
“Which brings us to our hieroglyphics.”
“You said you may be looking for an Indian? A Native?”
“It’s possible. A couple of witnesses have mentioned an Indian named Red Bear.”
“Well, these markings have nothing to do with Native Canadians or Americans. Unless you happen to have an Indian who’s interested in Voodoo.”
“Voodoo? In Canada?”
“Oh, sure. You get all kinds of it in Toronto. Even more in Montreal. Comes up by way of the Caribbean countries, and it’s completely harmless in most cases. But these markings you faxed to me, I’ve never seen anything like them. All those arrows bundled together, and so many repetitions, each one slightly different. I frankly don’t know what to make of them.”
“But you’re sure they’re not Indian.”
“Let me put it this way. If they are Indian, it’s a completely new type of glyph. There’s been nothing like it in North America as far as I’m aware. No, I’m thinking maybe some personal variation on Voodoo or Santeria. But that’s all I know.”
“So what are we going to do? Can you point me in some likely direction?”
“You have to talk to Helen Wasserstein.”
“Who’s she? RCMP?”
“Try ROM.”
The Royal Ontario Museum is perhaps the closest Canada gets to the Smithsonian or the British Museum. It is on a much smaller scale than either of those two august institutions, but what it does, it tends to do excellently. Virtually every high-school student in Ontario will at some point or other be bused to Toronto to view the museum’s dinosaurs, its Roman collection or its totem poles.
Helen Wasserstein was the ROM’s curator of Native Canadian artifacts, but luckily Delorme did not have to travel to Toronto in order to talk to her. As it turned out, Dr. Wasserstein was on a dig in the northern end of Algonquin Park, which put her a little more than an hour south of Algonquin Bay.
Delorme liked to drive, and she particularly liked driving into the forest. But the last part of the trip was over a dirt road that could hardly be called a road at all. More than once her head made contact with the roof of the car, and she wished for the first time in her life that she drove a Jeep or an SUV. She came, finally, to a barrier constructed of several strips of red tape.
A sign proclaimed the archaeological dig, and invited those not connected with the project to turn back. There were two Jeeps and a pickup truck parked among the trees. Delorme left her unmarked Caprice facing the tape and headed down the slope.
Smells of pine and loam were thick in the air. So were blackflies. Delorme swatted the air before her face like a neurotic fighting off intrusive thoughts. At the bottom of the hill lay a wide clearing, almost perfectly circular, from which the top layer of pine needles and soil had been scraped away. Three figures on hands and knees probed and sifted the dirt. All three, Delorme noted with envy, were wearing bug shirts.
One of the figures stood upright and stared at her. It was like being observed by an astronaut; Delorme wasn’t sure if the figure was male or female.
“I’m looking for Dr. Wasserstein,” Delorme said. “I understand she’s—”
The hooded figure raised a little spade and pointed to the other side of the dig. Dr. Wasserstein was crouched over a sieve that she was shirring back and forth as if she were a prospector.
“Dr. Wasserstein?”
The hood of netting turned to face her.
“My name is Lise Delorme. I’m a detective with the Algonquin Bay police. I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes of your time.”