The Shaman's Knife by Scott Young

“I might have seen something neither of you saw! I just like to start at the beginning, and see what I’m dealing with. Also, sometimes when the bodies are natives, with me especially, I might see or sense something that white guys don’t.”
    He said softly, “White guys . . . You think I’m white?”
    Oh, hell, I thought, and looked at him again, noticing his color, more than just ruddiness. Our people are usually smaller. His size had put me off.
    â€œTell me,” I said.
    He grinned sideways at me. “Small Inuit mother, great big goddamn French-Canadian father.”
    â€œSorry.” I really felt a lot more than just the one word, sorry. Here I’d been doing something to him that I’d hated when it was done to me. When I was a kid working my first year or two as an RCMP special around Inuvik and Sachs Harbor and expressed an opinion above my station, I had often been dumped on by white cops, some of them okay, really, but others like Barker, the king-of-the-hill types. Some of the reasons for dumping on me might have been valid, but when someone said openly or even implied that, being a native, I couldn’t really be expected to act like a real policeman, I would keep an impassive face. I thought at first maybe Bouvier now was doing the same, letting any resentment at my dumb mistake go away.
    Actually, he was doing more than just letting it go. I could see the corners of his mouth twitching. Suddenly he shook his head and laughed aloud. “Wait’ll I tell my wife! Jesus! Will she enjoy that about you thinking I’m not native.”
    â€œBe sure to tell her I said I was sorry.”
    â€œOh, I will.” He laughed again. “From a goddamn racist white guy to a goddamn racist Inuk! What next?”
    We rode in silence, both now smiling.
    â€œAnyway,” Bouvier said, pulling out onto the road again. “About holding the bodies here until you arrived . . .”
    I interrupted. “You gotta admit you sure got the bodies out of here fast.”
    Bouvier said mildly, “Not fast enough for the Co-op. When we heard that you were in Yellowknife and on your way here, I did raise that point, that you’d want to see the bodies, and what difference would a day or two make in getting them out? He yelled at me for second-guessing him, so I backed off. He was really pressured, knowing a lot of people would joke about him leaving a big case. That made him determined to get everything done that he could do, like getting the bodies to forensics . . .”
    The outskirts of the settlement showed fitfully ahead through the ground drift. I thought of the Twin Otter and its murdered cargo.
    â€œWhen I brought that up about waiting for you, what he said was what the fuck could you see that we didn’t? He also said that he didn’t figure there was some royal fucking highness that moving the bodies had to be cleared with.”
    It was about then that I began to come to my senses. I say, began. I still wasn’t really thinking rationally. I’d got myself stoked up too high, in too short a time. It was Tuesday suppertime and since Monday breakfast I’d flown from Labrador to Ottawa and then to Edmonton and then to Yellowknife, where I was up half the night talking to my mother with her head hurting, and then to Cambridge Bay and then to Sanirarsipaaq. But there was something else—and it was my fault.
    If I’d made one more phone call from Yellowknife to order that the bodies remain undisturbed until I got here, and if Barker had argued that crap about the Co-op freezer, I could have said to him loud and clear, “Clean out somebody’s goddamn home freezer and put ’em in there until I have a look! Why is it that half the goddamn spouse-murderers you hear about in a year stash bodies in home freezers practically forever or at least until new tenants move in or some innocent visitor looking for the ice cream opens the