Chapter 16

Wednesday morning Matti got to sleep in, while Dawn wasn’t so lucky. She had a full day of work, with interviews scheduled with several of the local politicians and their staff. Talk in the city had been heating up about the upcoming municipal elections, and who would be running for mayor. It was the kind of situation that would likely keep Dawn busy for the upcoming days as various people tested the waters before declaring themselves candidates. She had already warned Matti that she would be expected to work longer hours.

As a result, Matti got up somewhat after nine o’clock in the morning. It wasn’t usual for him to get up so late, but he had nothing pressing to do. It didn’t hurt that Dawn’s bed was a whole lot more comfortable than the bunk-bed he had been sleeping in for the last few days. After a shower and shave, he went to the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee, and grabbed the newspaper. Matti went into the living room to enjoy the two together, his coffee and newspaper, while seated in a comfortable reclining chair. For the next fifteen minutes that’s exactly what he did.

There wasn’t a lot of especially interesting news in the paper, and eventually he set it aside. He was just getting up to get the remote from the coffee table, so that he could turn on the television, when he noticed that the drawer of the end table beside his chair was partly open. When he tried to push it shut, it stubbornly refused to move. Matti pulled the drawer open to see what might be jamming it, and noticed a small booklet that seemed to be the culprit. It was standing on edge at the front of the drawer, with the spiral binding to the top. The binding and about a quarter of an inch of the booklet’s pages were above the top of the drawer, and were clearly the reason the drawer wouldn’t shut. Out of curiosity, he picked up the booklet to see what it was.

That simple act had enormous repercussions for Matti and Dawn, although they weren’t instantaneous. Matti flipped open the cover and discovered it consisted of maybe two dozen clear plastic pages, each holding two 4 x 6 photos back-to-back. As he looked at the first photo, his first reaction was to raise his eyebrows in curiosity, but that was soon followed by a loss of color in his face, as he reacted with shock when he realized what he was looking at. The photo was taken at an outdoor barbecue, and two of the people featured in the first of the photos were Thomas Dugan, the dead pilot of the plane, and Bert Fontaine, the man who had intended to kill Matti.

They were both wearing their black leather Wolverines vests over sleeveless T-shirts. The vests were the real deal, complete with a variety of cloth patches sewn in what appeared to be prescribed places. On the right side of both vests, near the top, were their nicknames. Scooby was stitched on Dugan’s vest, and Dog was on Fontaine’s. Both of the men looked much younger than the faces that Matti remembered from early June, and when he examined the picture closely he discovered the month and year in small print at the top of the photo. It was just over 11 years old.

Matti began turning the pages slowly, not recognizing anyone in the second one, but on another he saw a good photo of a man with the name Jiggs stitched on the right side of his vest. He would have to be the third member of the small group who had decided to rip off the drug purchase, Matti thought. As he leafed through the pages of the mini photo album, Matti found some more pictures of the three of them, as well as at least a half-dozen more members of the Wolverines. One that held his gaze for much longer than some of the others had both Dog Fontaine and another vest wearing Wolverine that Matti recognized. He was a grinning, bearded man wearing an eye-patch over his left eye, and he had the nickname Popeye on his vest. Standing between the two bikers was someone else that Matti recognized as well. It was a smiling, younger version of Dawn, and she had an arm around both of the men.

There were several other young women in the photos, and all of them, Dawn included, were wearing similar clothing. It consisted of very short shorts, and barely-there, loose tops. It was obvious that none of them were wearing bras that day, and it was equally obvious that none of them tried to hide the fact. If anything they were doing quite the opposite, judging from their poses and that in a couple of photos some of the girls were completely topless.

Matti flipped back to the first page, the one that had initially shocked him so much. In addition to the two bikers he had recognized, the photo included a side view of Dawn, showing clearly the tattoo she had removed from her right shoulder. It was a smaller replica of the snarling wolverine symbol of the motorcycle club. The narrow straps of her nearly see-through top couldn’t hide the tattoo from Matti’s view.

Matti spent a long time looking at the pictures, trying to come to terms with what he was seeing. It felt strange to him to see this side of Dawn, a side he would never have guessed she had. He also noticed the changes that the three men he recognized had undergone. All three were sporting long, unkempt hair, and unruly beards in the photos. He could tell now why Dog had shaved his head, as there were obvious signs that his hairline had begun receding 11 years earlier. Scooby had suffered a similar fate, although there was no obvious sign of it in that earlier photo. In it he had a full head of dark brown hair. The man he had recognized earlier as Popeye had much shorter hair currently than he did in the photo.

Even Dawn’s hair had changed, but not as much as he noticed on the others. It had been longer back then, perhaps by 4 to 6 inches, and it appeared she had favoured blonde streaks. Matti looked carefully at the other people in the photos, both men and women, but he didn’t recognize anyone else. As it was, he had recognized one person too many.

As he got up from the chair Matti wondered if he should take the booklet out and get copies made of the photos, but he quickly decided against it. He knew what he saw in each of them; there was no need for a hardcopy. In a state of shock and confusion, Matti picked up his gym bag of dirty laundry and left the apartment. As Matti was thinking about what he had just learned about Dawn, he didn’t know where to start, or what it all meant to him. Obviously, at some point in her life, Dawn had been deeply involved with the members of the Wolverines motorcycle club. From what he could deduce from the pictures he had seen, she seemed to be most closely connected to Bert (Dog) Fontaine. Obviously she knew all of the others, including the biker with the nickname Popeye, the same man that Matti had seen leaving the apartment building the night before.

There were tears in his eyes as he came to realize that Dawn had been lying to him about who her visitors were. The empty beer bottles and wine glasses were left in the living room by Popeye, the other two bikers, and the two young women who were with them. Things that he had seen made a lot more sense to him now. The young girls who had pointed him out obviously must have seen a picture of him to have recognized him so quickly. He was willing to bet that they had seen him in the DVD Dawn had made of her interview with him, the day that they had first met. He was almost certain they probably all watched it while drinking their beer and wine. As much as it was obvious that the girls had recognized him, it was also clear that Popeye knew who he was as well.

The more he thought about everything, the more upset and angry Matti became. Dawn had obviously known who the pilot was, and the man who had intended to kill him, before she ever came out to Lake Watchanabi. Her trip to the lake was not intended to get information for a news program; it was to check out him and the crash site. As he thought about it, he realized it was probably the only reason that Dawn had asked him repeatedly about the missing bag of money. She must have come to the lake on behalf of the Wolverines, first and foremost. He wondered if her station had agreed to the filming and interview at her urging, or if it was the station’s idea. Matti was afraid he already knew the answer.