Chapter 11

Jim sat staring out the window on the ride back to town. Marie didn't blame him. It had to be hard to have his wife fall apart like that. She thought of her fiancé who was a social worker in Thompson. It would kill her if he changed into someone else. Jim was a nice guy, she just hoped his wife didn't destroy his life.

Marie didn't mind the quiet. She was making a list in her head of the things that she needed to do to follow up on Leigh's statement. There wasn't anything to the shadows in the woods. Probably the punks Leigh chased turned on her then took the ax for some mayhem. Sam had probably found it lying around and used it on Jack. There were a couple of hours between Leigh taking the ax and the murder - plenty of time for a bunch of delinquents to get bored. Need to check if anyone had reported damage from an ax. Probably not, only people in the Plan reported vandalism any more, and only if it was their own property.

There was George too. Leigh didn't know his last name, but if he'd gone to Winnipeg with the track team, he should be easy to find. Marie would love to have a talk with him about what he was doing at the dance. Trying to stop the gangs was like trying to hold onto a fist full of water, but she might get a couple of new names out of him.

Marie dropped Jim off at his home and went to the detachment to write up her report.

The next day she dropped by the school. Mr. Paulie was the principal on the High School side and he knew who George was right away.

"George has some disabilities," Mr. Paulie said, "He doesn't fit into the life skills program, but most of his classes are adapted. He's a nice kid, but easily manipulated. He's always getting into trouble doing favours for the other students."

Marie nodded, he sounded just like the kind of kid that someone like Jack Tanist could twist around his finger. She hated people like Jack, who pretended to be good, but were users.

George came into the office and his face fell when he saw Marie.

"Hi, George," she said, "I hear you won a medal at the running meet in Winnipeg."

"I did!" George said, "Do you want to see it?"

"I'd love to."

Marie followed George out into the hall to a display case. There was a picture of George with his medal. There were two girls with him. One of girls had a silver medal. George's was gold.

"That's Tania," George said, pointing at the girl with the medal. "She runs the 5k. I don't like hurdles. Sofi came fifth in her race. She runs the 5k too."

"And what do you run?" Marie asked.

"I run 3k." George said. "I got the gold."

"It sounds like you had a good trip."

"We did. Mrs. Dalrymple came and watched the girls run."

"Where did you stay in Winnipeg?"

"We stayed at a big hotel. The girls had their own room, and I shared a room with a boy from The Pas."

"Where did Mr. Tanist stay?"

"In the hotel. There were teachers all over, so we couldn't get into trouble."

"You know what happened to Mr. Tanist?"

"Yeah, someone killed him with an ax. Some of the kids say it was Mrs. Dalrymple, that she went crazy and chopped him up."

"What do you think?"

"I don't think so. Mr. Tanist liked her. She didn't look crazy."

"She didn't look crazy?"

"At the dance, when she let me in."

"Why did she let you in?"

"Jack told her to. I had to make a delivery."

"What were you delivering?"

"Don't know," George looked down at his feet. "Jack told me it was better if I didn't know."

"You didn't think it was strange, him asking you to do this delivery for him?"

"All kinds of kids did favours for Jack. They had to or they'd get in trouble."

"What kind of favours?"

"I don't know, favours, you know."

"So who did you give the delivery to?"

"It wasn't a person. I had to put it in a locker, number 100."

"Can you show me?"

"Sure, I guess." George led her to a locker in a short stub of hallway. It was out of the way. No one would notice people doing anything, especially if it was another student.

"Can you open it for me?"

George rattled the door, but it didn't open.

"It's always unlocked for me; then I lock it up afterward."

"Is there anything else you need to tell me?"

"No, can I go back to class? It's shop and I like shop."

"Thanks, George." Marie went back to the office.

"Who is locker 100 assigned to?"

The secretary looked in the computer.

"It isn't assigned," she said, "the lock doesn't work right."

"It's locked now," Marie said.

"You could check with Mr. Kwali," the secretary said, "He might have fixed it."

Marie went to find the custodian. He was happy enough to open the locker for her. He showed her the locking mechanism.

"Anyone who knows how can open the locker," he said, "We don't need it, so I haven't spent the money to fix it."

"Thanks, Mr. Kwali," Marie looked in the empty locker.

She left the school and went to the detachment to write up her report.

"I think that's pretty much it," she said to Staff at the end of her shift. "It looks like Jack Tanist was trying to expand into the drug trade in town. The other gangs wouldn't like it. The prescriptions would have been a bonus, but it would have been easy enough for him to pick up heroin in Winnipeg. He used kids to run errands for him. Maybe he picked the wrong kid. We know Sam could be violent. He was a user, but he wouldn't know the heroin needed to be cut. People on drugs do strange things, he might have got too hot and thrown his clothes out the window. They'd be all over the bush. The heater on the truck was at maximum; I checked."

"So what made Mr. Tanist suddenly decide to become a dealer?"

"We checked on his background. There was nothing definite, but he was no teacher of the year winner. He played favourites, and there were rumbles of other problems. He had kids running favours for him. I talked to Tania and Sofi. He had them watching George in Winnipeg for most of the day while he took care of ‘stuff'. I suspect that we'll find that he was building his influence here in preparation to make his move. This was his third year here. Maybe he just decided the time was right."

"OK," Staff said, "Write up the file and close it for now. If something else comes up we'll take another look at it. Good work, Marie."

"You know it was a team effort."

Staff smiled.

"I'll let the team know they did good work."