more recent than the barely discernable snowshoe tracks Eric and I had followed into John-Joe’s shack. These partially filled tracks skirted along the frozen edge of the swamp to the dam itself, where they disappeared up and over the top.
I scanned the narrow expanse of the valley to see if I could catch sight of a vanishing figure. The wind whipped the new snow into eddies that slammed against the opposite cliff wall. Short of scaling the steep incline, there seemed to be no easy exit other than the way we’d come.
“Did you see anyone on your way in?” I asked Eric.
He shook his head. “They’ve got to belong to John-Joe.”
I called out to the young man to ask again if he’d worn snowshoes. He shouted back, “No.”
“Which direction did you come from?”
John-Joe started to answer, but was stopped by the SQ guard. John-Joe, however, managed to tell us by nodding his head towards a line of deeper indentations, more boot-like, that emerged from a cleft in the valley wall behind the hunting camp. They abutted the flatter and broader snowshoe track at a right angle.
“Okay, so someone else was here. Would explain the tracks we saw earlier.” Eric said.
“So he must’ve been here when we arrived. Yikes, he was here while I was alone.” I gasped as the enormity hit me. “But I don’t remember seeing any snowshoes. Do you?”
“No, but this tree is a little off to one side. We probably just didn’t notice.” Eric paused. “And there has to be a damn good reason why he never made his presence known. He’s got to be involved.”
“Maybe, despite John-Joe having a knife, this guy’s the one who actually murdered Chantal?” An icy shiver ran down my spine. “If that’s the case, then he could’ve killed me too, while I was alone.”
Eric ran his fingers through his thick mane. “I never should’ve left you.”
“But it was my choice.” I searched his eyes, looking for any hint of loving concern, but he’d shut that part away from me. I glanced away. “I wonder where the guy hid out.”
Then I noticed another set of depressions leading to an outhouse at the edge of a birch grove. “I think I’ve found his hiding place.”
As Eric called out for one of the SQ policemen to check it out, I started walking towards the weathered wooden structure. Its door was firmly closed. I reached it at the same time as the cop. He shoved me aside, pulled out his gun and shouted in French for the guy to come out.
Eric grabbed my arm and jerked me backwards, almost making me fall into a snow drift. “Christ, what are you doing, Meg? You could get killed.”
I rubbed my wrenched shoulder. “If you don’t mind, I can look after myself. I don’t need you to push me around. Besides, there’s no way the guy is still hanging around here.” I turned my back to him but stayed where he’d pushed me, a safe distance from the outhouse.
We waited in icy silence. By the time the cop decided to open the door, my anger had dissipated, and I was chastising myself for rushing in without thinking. I snuck a quick glance at Eric, intending to offer an apology, but the set line of his lips dissuaded me. I turned back to the scene at the outhouse.
As expected, the open door revealed an empty privy. After a cursory once-over, the cop gave us the classic “crazy in the head” motion with his hand and returned to the hut.
Eric walked back to the snowshoe tracks. “You stay here. I’m going to see where these go.”
He retrieved the high-tech aluminum snowshoes strapped onto the back of his skidoo, headed up to the beaver dam and started walking across the solid, metre-wide structure made from the most stable materials the beavers can find, branches and mud.
“Sacrebleu!” Sergeant LaFramboise shouted in my ear. He pointed to Eric. “Qu’est-ce qu’il fait?”
I told him of our suspicions.
“Stop, monsieur,” he yelled at Eric. “This is a matter for the police.”
But Eric ignored him and continued walking along the top of the dam. When he reached the other side, he headed towards the cliff wall.
“Probably a better tracker than any of your men,” the Migiskan police chief said, coming to stand beside the SQ sergeant. “But to keep you happy, I’ll go with him.” And strapping on his own snowshoes, Decontie took off after Eric, who’d turned left at the base of the wall and now disappeared from view.
Perhaps LaFramboise did have a spot of human kindness in him after all, for he told me to wait in the shelter of the shack as long as I didn’t get in the way of his men.
“What about John-Joe?” I asked, looking over to where the young man stood shivering in his wet clothes, with his bare hands handcuffed to the tree. “He’s got a bad cold. Let him wait in the shack too.”
LaFramboise sneered. “Bah, he is made for such weather.”
“Much like Québécois, eh?” I shot back, no longer able to contain my anger. “I’ll wait outside with John-Joe.”
I walked over with the spare pair of mitts I carried in my backpack, but was stopped short by his SQ guard, who snatched them from my hand and tossed them to John-Joe, who of course couldn’t catch them.
“Put them on him,” I said, “or I’ll have you cited for mistreating a prisoner.”
The SQ cop glared at me, while the MPD cop picked them off the snow and shoved them onto the prisoner’s trembling hands. John-Joe flashed me one of his infamous Tom Cruise smiles, which was immediately erased by another bout of coughing.
Eric and Chief Decontie returned within a half hour, but not along the route they’d taken. They came back via the main trail to John-Joe’s hunting camp.
“Snowshoe track, all right,” Eric said. “Found a couple of clear ones made from a bear paw style of snowshoe.”
“Exactly like the pair I saw. Where’d he go?”
“Afraid we lost him,” Chief Decontie replied. “Track took us to the new ski marathon trail, where it got wiped out by snowmobile tracks and fresh snow.”
“Could he have had a skidoo waiting?” I asked. I tried to remember if I’d seen one on that stretch as we’d whisked by on our way here, but only had the image of snow and trees.
“Possible, but too hard to tell.”
“So, now that you have another suspect, does this mean you can let John-Joe go?” I asked.
Joining us, Sergeant LaFramboise interjected, “Impossible, madame. Perhaps this man is here when you arrive, but there is no evidence to tell us he is here when this young Québécoise is killed. Non, madame, there are only two persons here, Mademoiselle Chantal and the Indian. And he has the knife that analysis will prove he kills her.”
“He has a name,” Eric said, no longer bothering to conceal his anger. “It is John-Joe MacGregor.”
This
