Immersed in the View Read online

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s a very small park. Nothing like Fish Creek or Glenbow. Just a little pond with a pathway around it. And lots of foot traffic. Runners, walkers, dog people. I don’t think it could have been here any longer than last night or early this morning.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A couple of police units rolled up within a few minutes. Margie was more relaxed once they could cordon off the pond and the pathway that looped around it to prevent anyone from getting too close to the scene. They covered the body until they could get screens up to shield it from view.

  At that point, it became a waiting game. Margie supposed she should have guessed that there would be only a skeleton crew on in the forensics department and medical examiner’s office due to the statutory holiday. There were people on call, but it would take time for them to get out to the scene, especially if they had been planning to spend the day with family, as Margie had.

  She stood watching the various walkers rubbernecking to see what was going on, gathering in little clumps to speculate with each other. She didn’t see anyone who looked concerned, as if they might be missing a family member and worried about some misadventure. At least she didn’t have to deal with trying to keep a mother, brother, or best friend away from the body.

  The crows were cawing loudly and the magpies screaming, drowning out the sounds of the blackbirds she had been listening to earlier. Margie had noticed that the magpies had become much more vocal since their babies had left the nest, frequently calling warnings of predators or other perceived dangers. The black and white magpie fledglings were so large that it was hard to tell them apart from the parents, other than by the fluffiness of their baby feathers or their behavior if she watched them for long enough.

  “There they are,” one of the constables commented.

  Margie blinked her eyes and looked around, realizing that she had zoned out listening to the birds. Not a good idea. As a detective, she needed to have her head on a swivel, always looking around for possible dangers, clues, people she needed to talk to, behaviors that might give people away. It wouldn’t do to let herself be distracted.

  The medical examiner’s van and the forensic techs both rolled up, nudging their way into the now-crowded parking lot, then rolling through the opening for the pathway to drive over the grass and stop beside the body. No point in trying to carry a body and the equipment back and forth to the parking lot. Much more efficient to have everything right at hand.

  Margie nodded to each of the techs. She recognized them from earlier cases but wasn’t sure enough of names to address them with certainty.

  “What’s this I hear?” one of them asked, a tall fellow with a goofy grin that he covered with a mask as he approached, “You’re providing your own bodies now?”

  Margie’s smile felt stretched thin, like her emotions over the past few weeks. It was taut and uncomfortable. But he didn’t know how she was feeling. The nature of their business often led to morbid humor.

  “I didn’t plan it that way, believe me. I was supposed to have the day off.”

  He chuckled and went to work, scouting around the area, getting equipment out of the truck, working in tandem with his partner. Margie recognized the death investigator who got out of the medical examiner’s van.

  “Dr. Galt. Nice to see you again.”

  Dr. Galt nodded. He had white hair and a small white beard and appeared to have missed a spot shaving that morning. He probably had not been planning to go out anywhere and had shaven quickly when he got the call. But he was calm and unhurried in his approach. Everyone worked together to set up privacy screens so that they could uncover the body again without spectators. Dr. Galt looked the man over very slowly, not touching him.

  “Who discovered the body?”

  “That was me.”

  By his lack of reaction, she suspected he already knew that and was simply asking as a matter of course. “In the water or out?”

  “In. Face down. I could see his back and one shoe, to start with.”

  Dr. Galt nodded. He gave the techs various instructions, making sure that all visible evidence was retrieved. They stretched a white body bag out next to him and then, together, turned him over, setting him into it, so that for the first time Margie was viewing his chest instead of his back. She saw his long black hair, brown skin, and the Indigenous cast apparent in his features, even with how bloated his face was. Margie sighed.

  “Does he have any identification on him?”

  They looked in her direction, but ignored the question, going over the body in their own methodical procedure. It was a few minutes before they pulled out a slim wallet protruding from his pocket.

  “Bruce Hungry Bear, according to his identification.”

  “Thirsty Bear, more likely,” one of the techs intoned. The other, the tall one, punched him in the shoulder.

  “Hey! What was that for?”

  “Shut up. Look at her.”

  The tech who had commented turned and looked at Margie not-so-surreptitiously. It was a moment before everything apparently clicked into place and he realized his mistake. Making racist remarks about a victim in front of an Indigenous detective was not a particularly smart thing to do.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “Didn’t see you.”

  Margie was counting off each intake and exhale of breath, trying to keep herself from breaking into a tirade. He was going to make drunk Indian jokes about a victim? In the current political climate?

  Hundreds of unmarked graves had been revealed at residential schools in the last six weeks. The entire Indigenous population of the country was in mourning, many calling for the cancellation of Canada Day celebrations altogether, and he thought it was appropriate to voice his racist biases out loud? In front of Margie?

  There were going to be fireworks all right, and they wouldn’t be the ones that would be going off at midnight.

  “What is your name?” she demanded.

  The man swallowed and pretended to be occupied with carefully rechecking all the evidence that had been bagged so far. He looked away from Margie, out at the glass-smooth surface of the pond. There might be more evidence out there. Might have to drain the pond to check.

  “Your name,” Margie repeated. “Now.”

  “Oliver Symons. But it was just a joke. I didn’t mean anything by it. Just trying to lighten the mood. Morgue humor.”

  Margie didn’t have her duty notepad on her, but she had her phone. She woke it up, tapped out his name below the notes she had already made about the investigation, and slid it back into her running belt. “Your comment was not funny,” she told him flatly.

  She could see it was a struggle for him not to respond. He wanted to justify himself. Maybe to call her a few choice names. But he’d already dug himself deep enough, and he was clearly fighting the urge not to dig himself any deeper. He pressed his lips together and continued to work the scene. There were no more comments about the race of their victim.

  Margie stayed out of the way, fielding inquiries on her phone from MacDonald and the constables who were canvassing the nearby houses. They each had a job to do there and, while she was the primary and was there to supervise the gathering of forensic evidence, she believed that, as a rule, the techs were better when left to do the job the way they had been trained than for her to micromanage the process.

  “Detective Pat!”

  Margie turned at the familiar voice. It was Detective Cruz, one of the other detectives on the homicide squad. A good cop and a good man. Filipino. Her smile of greeting was not as plastic as the others had been.

  “Cruz. You didn’t need to come out.”

  “You aren’t even supposed to be on today. I am.”

  “I can take care of this. Didn’t you want to take the day off with your kids?”

  He was older than Margie, near the age when she expected him to retire from homicide, but his children were younger than Christina. Margie wasn’t sure how many kids he had. She had see
n them at the department Christmas party, but they had all looked so much alike that she had lost track of how many there were and which was which.

  “No. We are going to wait until the heat breaks, and then take them out for some fun. In this weather… about all they want to do is paddle in the wading pool. The heat doesn’t bother me so much. But they were all born here in Canada and they are not used to it.”

  “So maybe Saturday you can do something with them.”

  Cruz nodded. “And until then, I’m at your service. Where do you need me?”

  Margie removed her hat and wiped the sweat collecting along her forehead. The day had warmed very quickly, and everyone was moving slowly and looking uncomfortable. “You know what? I need to move around a bit. I ran here, and then I’ve been standing around and my legs are seizing up. I’m going to scout a wider perimeter, just to make sure that there’s nothing we’ve missed, then I’m going to run home, shower off, and come back in my car.”

  “You’re that close?”

  “Just about a kilometer from here.” Margie swallowed a couple of gulps of water to replace what she had already sweated out. “So I’ll be back in a few minutes. Probably before the techs are done.”

  She looked back toward the men around the body. When she looked back at Cruz, he gave her a puzzled look. “What’s going on?”

  “What?”

  “You’re looking kinda ticked off, there. Is it just the heat?”

  “Symons there… making racist comments.”

  Cruz’s brows went up. “Really? That doesn’t sound right. Never heard anything from him before.”

  “Maybe he’s okay with Filipinos.”

  “But not you? You’re about as Canadian as they get.”

  “Too Canadian. Doesn’t have much respect for Indigenous peoples, I guess.”

  “Do you want me to say something to him?”

  Margie laughed. “No. I’ll make a report. Let his department deal with it. I was here and saw and heard what he had to say. You didn’t.”

  “You just say the word, and I’ll take him in the back alley,” Cruz teased. “Or we could do it right here. I could help him look under the water to see whether there’s any evidence to be gathered there.”

  “Don’t beat anyone up before I get back.”

  He grinned and nodded.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Margie made a large loop around the park, crossing over Twenty-Sixth Street to the hill overlooking the irrigation canal and Deerfoot Trail. There was a lookout point there that she and Christina often stopped at when they were taking Stella out for a walk. Margie looked for anything that was out of place. There was no litter, and there were no breaks in the foliage or tracks through the grass that she could see. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was a high-traffic area, lots of people through there with their dogs, plenty of wildlife, including foxes and coyotes right there in the middle of the city. And skunks, of course. Stella had recently had a close encounter with one of the little black and white stinkers.

  She returned through the parking lot where the police vehicles were parked, along the longer loop that got closer to the houses, looking into the back yards for anything that might have been thrown over the fence in an attempt to get rid of evidence. Bystanders watched her curiously, but didn’t approach to ask any questions. When she reached Twenty-Eighth Street on the other side of the splash park and volleyball courts, Margie stopped and gazed at the chain link fence by West Dover School. Someone had tied orange ribbons through the links.

  There were no signs explaining the memorial, but Margie didn’t need one. Orange ribbons for the children who had died at the residential schools. Currently at the forefront of the minds of the public because ground-penetrating radar was being used at some of the old residential school properties to seek out the Indigenous children who had been buried there, victims of abuse, neglect, and disease, their resting places and identities obscured during the intervening years.

  Her chest was tight. She had listened to the stories. She could imagine having Christina ripped from her arms to be sent away to a school designed to “beat the Indian out of her.” Having her stolen away, knowing full well that she was going to be abused and might never return home.

  Margie breathed deeply, trying to loosen the tension in her shoulders. She crossed the street to touch a couple of the ribbons. She took a few pictures from her phone and then put it back away.

  She completed her circuit around the park, back past the church with the cross on top, through the playground, and to the parking lot again. She called Cruz’s number as she crossed Twenty-Sixth Street again to run the pathway home.

  “Detective Cruz,” he answered.

  “Pat here. There are a number of garbage cans and bins in the area. The school, the church, the playgrounds, and the park itself. We’ll want to at least have a cursory look to see whether anything was thrown away.”

  “On it. See you after your shower.”

  Margie was really sweating. The weather pattern was extreme compared to what she had been accustomed to in Winnipeg, and she wasn’t used to running in the heat. She slowed to a walk for the last block and chugged the rest of her water.

  Stella barked excitedly and ran around when Margie walked in the door, clearly wanting to be taken out herself. Margie glanced around, not expecting Christina to be awake.

  But Christina was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, eyes partially closed, waiting for the coffee maker to finish its duties.

  “Hi, Mom.” Christina yawned and rubbed her eyes. “What time did you get up? I thought you would be up really early for your run. You said you wanted to beat the heat.” She looked Margie over accusingly. “You’ll get heatstroke.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” Margie laughed. Christina had taken on the role of mother lately, repeating back all the things that Margie had taught her about eating properly, cleaning up after herself, getting enough sleep, and all of the other things that Margie had assumed Christina hadn’t been listening to over the years. “I’m going to have a quick shower and then I’ll tell you about it.”

  Christina was still in the kitchen when Margie got out, sitting in one of the kitchen chairs with her feet on the seat and her knees to her chest while she sipped her coffee. Too hot for a day that was so warm. Margie was craving one of the cold cans of Coke in the fridge but didn’t want a lecture on healthy eating from Christina too. She got herself a cold bottle of water instead.

  “So, something happened?” Christina asked, trailing her fingers through Stella’s thick fur.

  Stella had been spending most of the week sprawled out on the floor, using as little energy as possible. But she did have occasional bursts of activity when she was hungry or wanted outside.

  “Yes… something happened in the park today.”

  “In the park? What?”

  “In Valleyview, where we go to play Frisbee and they have that splash park?” Margie suggested, not sure Christina knew which park she was talking about.

  “Yeah?”

  “There was… something in the water when I went by it today.”

  “Did you see the muskrat? Or the ducklings?”

  “Well… I’m sure they were there. But there was actually… a man died there today.”

  Christina’s eyes widened. “What? Were you there when it happened? I saw on the internet that lots of people are dying from the heat. Old people.”

  “He didn’t die in front of me. His body was in the water when I got there. Maybe drowned, we’ll have to wait for the autopsy.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Christina shook her head. “Parks Pat strikes again. Detective Patenaude investigating another park murder.”

  “I wasn’t trying to find a body. And I certainly didn’t have anything to do with it being there.”

  “That’s crazy.” Christina ran her fingers through her long, black hair. “It wasn’t anyone we know, was it?”

  “No. No one we know.” Margie decided to
pour herself a little bit of coffee. It smelled so good. She took a sip, looking down into the depths of her cup with sadness welling up inside. “One of our brothers. A Siksiká man, I think. But not one I’ve ever met before.”

  “Oh.” Christina too dropped her eyes, considering. It had been a difficult month for everyone in the Indigenous communities, opening old wounds and bringing fresh trauma. “That’s sad.”

  Margie nodded her agreement. “I have to go back. I just came home to shower and change. Will you take Stella out for a bit? Not for too long, I don’t want either of you to get overheated…”

  Christina nodded. “Sure. We’ll go for a walk.”

  “Thanks, sweetie.” Margie leaned forward and kissed Christina on the forehead and scratched Stella’s ears. “Maarsii.”

  When Margie got back to the park, things had quieted considerably. Most of the police vehicles were gone. The forensic techs and Dr. Galt were gone. Which of course meant that the body had been removed. Margie took a deep breath in and blew it out again. She joined Detective Cruz once more.

  “Looks like things are moving along.”

  Cruz nodded. “There is nothing suspicious, probably just an accident. We’ll have the scene cleared pretty soon.”

  “Good. Run into any trouble?” Margie didn’t specify whether she was talking about more comments by the tech, bystanders, or any one of a hundred other things that could go wrong at a scene. Let him interpret it as he saw fit.

  “No. Everything has been quiet. We’ll check the rest of the garbages,” Cruz took a quick look around. “Then, I think we’ll be done.”

  “All right.”

  Cruz pulled his phone out to look at the screen. “We have the address from his driver’s license. Are you up for a death notification?”

  Not Margie’s favorite part of the job. Not any homicide detective’s favorite part of the job. “Yes. Of course. Is it close by?”