Ragged Lake Read online

  RAGGED

  LAKE

  RON CORBETT

  A FRANK YAKABUSKI MYSTERY

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Fireflies in the Snow I

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Fireflies in the Snow II

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Fireflies in the Snow III

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  A. A violent order is a disorder; and

  B. great disorder is an order. These

  two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)

  “Connoisseur of Chaos,”

  Wallace Stevens

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. All places and characters are imagined. While the story takes place somewhere on the Northern Divide, there are no literal depictions of any city or town on the Divide.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The cabin had been built by the headwaters of the Springfield River, not far from Five Mile Camp where the Cree who worked for O’Hearn Forest Products once lived. This was on the Northern Divide, where rivers ran north and south and all the trees were coniferous, a land of lush, green forests and running water — so much running water there was a low hum in the air for much of the year.

  The cabin was built by a family: a man, woman, and young girl who arrived at the headwaters one spring and started hauling lumber from the abandoned work camp. When O’Hearn learned of the theft, it sent a bull rigger to investigate; but when the man came back to Springfield, he told the company to forget about it. The family was coco. The trusses and frames had been put together without the aid of a mitre, he explained, so there was a demented-playhouse slant to the roofline. The door was rough-hewn planks. The windows were mismatched sizes. The strangest part of all was perhaps the roof, which was made of beer and pop cans flattened to resemble tin shingles. From a distance, the rigger said, laughing at the memory, the cabin looked like a Christmas tree about to keel over.

  “They will be gone in a year,” he promised. “Don’t waste your time and money on lawyers. Forget about them.”

  The family rarely left the cabin, or the land near the cabin, going only occasionally to the nearby village of Ragged Lake to cash a cheque the man had mailed to him care of the Mattamy Fishing Lodge. There, they would buy provisions from the kitchen. Except for these two interactions — cashing a cheque with a bartender, buying food from a cook — the family seemed to have no other dealings with people.

  “Want anything else this month?” the cook would sometimes ask the man. “I can give you a deal on some eggs. Or whisky. Would you like whisky? I can talk to the bartender about getting you some.”

  “The eggs won’t make it,” the man would answer, “and I don’t need whisky.”

  “What man up here doesn’t need whisky?”

  “Bad for you —” and here the squatter would point to his head and make a sound like a gun going off “— blows off your head.”

  “But you put it back on with more whisky,” the cook would answer. “That’s how whisky works.”

  But the squatter never bought whisky. Just dried milk, Red River cereal, coffee, sugar, flour, and other non-perishables that he packaged carefully into a Woods rucksack. He’d lift it onto his back and walk five miles back to his cabin. He was a middle-aged man with long, blond hair matted and unwashed — black flies and sumac buds mashed into the strands of his hair in summer, ice and snow in winter. Tall and thin, he usually wore mechanic bibs and flannel shirts, and his skin was that of an old man, weather-scarred and burnished. The woman was tall and beautiful. The young girl looked like her mother.

  No one in Ragged Lake ever visited the family, and, with Five Mile Camp long abandoned, people rarely even came close. The cabin was not on a snowmobile trail. The fishing on the Springfield was generally considered poor until the river widened five miles to the south. The cabin was as cut off from people and the daily activities of people as an archaeological ruin waiting to be discovered.

  It was for this reason no one in Ragged Lake could say with certainty when the family was murdered.

  It was a tree-marker working for O’Hearn near the headwaters, marking pine to be cut, who found them, surprised when he saw the cabin, because it was on none of his maps. When the boy approached, he caught the scent of something warm and tart, a broad, sweet scent on a day that had until then carried only the sharp, thin smells of winter. Pine gum and frozen water. Spruce and falling snow.

  The boy never went inside the cabin. Peered through a window and then took off for Ragged Lake, making good time on his snowshoes, then telling the bartender at the Mattamy something bad had happened by the headwaters of the Springfield. Something that shouldn’t have happened, because no cabin should have been out there on O’Hearn timber rights, on O’Hearn land. Something evil-bad had happened.

  They needed to phone someone.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The call was logged in at the Cork’s Town detachment of the Springfield Regional Police at 6:17 p.m. on a Tuesday evening, the first week of February. An elderly dispatcher took the call, asked a few questions, then reached for an incident-report form and repeated most of his questions. The call was logged out at 6:29. After that, the dispatcher hit a key on his computer and a list of names and phone numbers appeared on his screen. He dialed the third on the list.

  When the phone was answered, the dispatcher said, “Yak, I know you’re gone for the day, but I just took a call from some bartender at a fishing lodge up in Ragged Lake. Guy says there’s been some people killed up there.”

  Frank Yakabuski rubbed his eyes and looked around the small apartment where he was sitting. His father had gone to the kitchen when his cellphone rang and was now running water for a kettle. Yakabuski held up one finger and his father nodded.

  “People killed? What are you talking about, Donnie?”

  “It was all a jumble, Yak. You need to talk to the guy. The Mattamy Fishing Lodge. That’s where he said he was phoning from. I’ve got the number.”

  “The Mattamy? Up in Ragged Lake? Since when do we take calls for Ragged Lake?”

  “The past four years, Yak. You didn’t get the memo? Oh, right, major crimes. Excuse me, Senior Detective Frank Yaka-freakin’-buski.”

  “Just asking, Donnie. Is that because of the detachment closing in High River?”

  “You got it. You must be one hell of a detective.”

  “All right, all right. Give me the number.”

  “Got it right here. How’s Billy, by the way?”

  Yakabuski stared at his father. His dad was looking out his kitchen window, waiting for the kettle to boil, a Hudson’s Bay blanket on his knees and an open paperback on his lap. Three years ago, his fathe
r had walked into the Stedman’s department store in High River looking for mosquito netting for his hunt cabin only to be followed a minute later by a stickup crew from Springfield. Yakabuski’s father saw them come in. One man stationing himself by the front door. The other two heading toward a back office. His father followed the two heading toward the office before shouting: “Cops! Put your hands where I can see ’em!”

  He was old-school. From a generation that thought if a cop told you to put your hands where he could see them, that’s what you did. Instead, the two men turned, craned their necks to see if they were missing something, then raised the sawed-off shotguns they had hidden beneath their coats and fired. It was only the tremendous bulk of Yakabuski’s dad that saved him. He took the blast in his hips and stomach instead of his chest. He still ended up face down in the toy aisle of the Stedman’s with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figurines raining down on him. But he didn’t die.

  “He’s good. Thanks for asking.”

  “Never gets any easier, does it? If there’s anything Linda or I can do, all you have to do is ask, Yak. You know that, right?”

  “I know that, Donnie. Thanks.”

  “You can’t do it all yourself. There are plenty of people down here who think the world of your dad. You could get all the help you needed if you just—”

  “Still got that number, Donnie?”

  “Right. Here it is.”

  . . .

  Yakabuski walked into the kitchen to find his dad still staring out the window. The kettle had boiled and then clicked off.

  “You have to make a call?”

  “I do.”

  “You can make it here if you want.”

  “I can make it in the car, too.”

  “It won’t matter?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  His dad nodded and the trace of a smile slipped across his face. He turned his wheelchair to look at his son.

  “When did you start taking calls for Ragged Lake?”

  “Four years ago, Donnie says. After the feds closed down their detachment in High River. Any major crime comes to us, apparently. There’s a bartender at the Mattamy says some people have been killed up there.”

  Ragged Lake was high in the North Country, right on the Northern Divide, about four hundred miles from Springfield.

  “Killed how?”

  “Donnie didn’t know.”

  “How many?”

  “He didn’t know.”

  “Fuckin’ Donnie. How would you even get to Ragged Lake this time of year? You can’t drive any of the logging roads.”

  “If the lodge is open, maybe there’s a plane.”

  “Maybe.”

  The sun was about to sink below a line of low-rise apartments on a bluff the other side of the river. For the past thirty minutes its trajectory had cast an oblong shadow across the city, moving over the highways and subdivisions, the rail line and glass office towers downtown. The towers refracted the last of the rays and looked for a second like the flames you sometimes see shooting from a spent fire. Then the sun slipped below the bluff and the city was covered in a shadow that turned in seconds from grey to cobalt to black.

  “I better go make that call.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Yakabuski started his Jeep, put it in gear, and headed toward the on-ramp for Highway 7. He was going to his ice-fishing hut before heading home. The ling had been running well and if there was anything to this call, he wouldn’t be back for a few days.

  When he was on the highway, he punched the number Donnie had given him.

  The phone was answered on the first ring. “Mattamy Fishing Lodge.”

  “This is Detective Frank Yakabuski with the Springfield Regional Police. Someone up there phoned and reported—”

  “You want the kid.”

  And the line went quiet. A few seconds later, another voice came on. A younger voice. Yakabuski repeated his introduction, then said, “What’s happening up there, son?”

  “There’s people dead, sir. That’s what’s happening up here.”

  “At the Mattamy?”

  “No sir, by some old Indian camp out by the headwaters of the Springfield. Where there ain’t supposed to be no cabin and there ain’t supposed to be no people.”

  “What were you doing out there, son?”

  “Marking pine for O’Hearn. It’s got to be some sort of squatters’ cabin. That’s why I checked it out. I was thinking maybe the company should know about it. I was just marking pine and then . . . man . . . oh man . . .”

  “Take another drink, son.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Take another drink of whatever you have in front of you. Then tell me what you’ve seen.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The boy’s voice was a little steadier when he came back. He said, “I was out marking trees for O’Hearn, the bush around Ragged Lake. I’m by some old bush camp late in the afternoon when I see a cabin. It’s a strange-looking cabin. You gotta see it. I go check it out. I knock on the door but no one answers, so I look through a window — curious, you know, I’ve always been that way, gets me into all sorts of trouble. Once, in Elmira, I was driving a logging truck and I went past—”

  “Take another drink, son.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Back on the phone, the tree-marker said at first he couldn’t make out what was inside the cabin, but then his eyes adjusted and he could make out a couch, an airtight, some floor-to-ceiling curtains he guessed were room dividers. Then he saw a man lying on the floor. A man without a chest.

  “No, that ain’t right. Maybe he had a chest. I can’t say for sure. It’s just that he was . . . he was . . .”

  “There were two parts to him.”

  “That’s right, sir. There were two freakin’ parts to him.”

  “You said dead people. What else did you see?”

  “I saw a woman. Lying behind a couch. A naked woman. Oh, I don’t know if she was naked naked, like, but she didn’t have any pants on. I could see her legs. There was blood everywhere.”

  “Did you go inside?”

  “Hell, no. I didn’t know what was going on. I headed off to Ragged Lake as fast as I could. Got the bartender here to call you.”

  Yakabuski didn’t say anything for a minute. He had been to Ragged Lake only once before, fishing with his father when he was a boy. He remembered taking days to get there. Then he remembered they had gone fishing at the Goyette Reservoir first, so it wouldn’t have taken days.

  “Let me speak to the bartender.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The first voice came back and Yakabuski said, “Do you know this kid?”

  “No. He’s a tree-marker for O’Hearn. He don’t live ’round here.”

  “Do you know who lives in that cabin he’s talking about?”

  “Squatters. A man and a woman. You’d see ’em in town sometimes.”

  “Know their names?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone in town know their names?”

  “Doubt it. They’re squatters.”

  “How do you get to Ragged Lake this time of year?”

  “There’s no road in the winter. You can take a bush plane, or there’s a train runs out of High River every second day.”

  “What if you don’t have a bush plane and you’re not in High River?”

  “Then you’re taking a snowmobile down the old S and P Line. From where you are, I’d say it’s about ten hours.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Yakabuski took the Cork’s Town exit from Highway 7 and began driving down narrow streets. Cork’s Town was where Springfield began, where the first settlers came — also the place everyone left as soon as they had the chance. Which didn’t make a lot of sense to Yakabuski when he looked at where they went. The subur
bs, built around Cork’s Town — on the lowest land in the Valley, so homes were flooded every spring and some of them never smelled quite right when you went inside. Or the Nosoto housing projects the other side of the river. Or the high-rise condominium towers, gated and beached like dead fish twenty miles downriver.

  He drove past the abandoned warehouses and steerage-forward buildings, down a street of lumbermen’s cottages that never got torn down, for some reason. Within a few minutes, he was clear of Cork’s Town and driving beside the Springfield, at one of the widest points on the river, a big sweeping curve of snow-filled river that cut through the night like a plume of smoke. Yakabuski followed the river and five miles on took a hard left. He stopped to open the gate to a closed-for-the-season trailer park and cut through, out onto an ice road. There was a small colony of ice-fishing huts on Entrance Bay, and Yakabuski, as he did every year, had the last hut on the road.

  Likely a domestic. That’s what he was telling himself when he parked. If you were going to live in a squatter’s cabin five miles outside a ghost town — which is what Ragged Lake was these days, ever since they closed the pulp and paper mill more than a decade ago — well, you never wanted to be too cynical about certain things in this world, but if you were going to do a thing like that, plus keep a gun around, you were just asking for trouble. Like anyone wouldn’t go mad-trapper crazy after two winters.

  He unlocked the door to his hut, threw some kindling into the airtight, lit the wood, and took the wooden board off the hole augered in the ice. He took his rig down, and, when the fire was burning nicely, he slid the tail of a whitefish over a number-six hook. He counted out line and stopped at twenty feet. Took a handful of tails from the bait bucket and threw them into the hole. The scales were silver, with a sheen, and, as they sank through the black water, Yakabuski thought for a moment they looked like a splash of shooting stars.

  Yakabuski had been with the Springfield Regional Police twelve years, the last eight in major crimes. He was from High River, where he was related to half the town — High River being the oldest Polish settlement in Canada, a thing you would never deduce from the name. The town was in the Upper Springfield Valley, near the western arm of the Northern Divide, and already named when the Poles arrived.