Forever Dead

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  “I don’t know who you are, but I sure could use some help right about now.” My voice broke on the last word and I hurried on, hoping he hadn’t noticed. “I’m sorry about your truck but there’s a body up in the bush and I need a phone to call the police. Your truck was the first thing I came across and it has a phone. I need it.”

  He glowered at me.

  “Yeah sure, lady. I’ve heard ’em all,” he said, but his anger spluttered. He was about to say something else, seemed to think better of it, and said instead, “What body? Where?” His eyes narrowed to pinpoints, his anger suddenly turning into sharp-eyed interest, and something more. Was I imagining it? Or did he already know something about the body in the woods?

  “It’s back up the portage trail, above the falls, maybe a mile. There’s a camp up there.”

  I thought I saw a smile flit across his face, but it was hard to tell with so much of his face hidden by hair. He was standing very still, with his hands held loosely at his sides. Suddenly he raised them and chopped the air with a vicious downward motion that made me leap back, my heart convulsing.

  “I don’t give a good goddamn about any dead body. You damn screaming greenies can look after your own dead bodies, and if the guy’s already dead, it’s no emergency, is it?”

  I must admit he had a point. He made a sudden move toward me and then froze as he fixed his gaze on something behind me, the expression on his face darkening another dozen shades. I slowly turned my head and saw Ryan running down the road, flanked on either side by a man and a woman. I was so relieved to see him that when he came up and took me by the arm to see if I was okay I nearly slid to the ground, my wobbly knees suddenly proving how much I needed them to hold me up. We stood together and watched as the man who had been with Ryan squared off with my behemoth, although I was interested to see that he took great care not to get within swinging distance of those huge arms.

  “Cameron, what the hell are you doing here?” asked the man in a thin, wheezy voice. He was a slight, balding guy who was wearing a shirt several sizes too big for him. Despite the bravado in his words he did not move any closer to the guy. Cameron’s eyes narrowed to slits and his fists clenched, but he said nothing.

  “This isn’t part of your leasing area, it belongs to the university, and we don’t take kindly to you trespassing here,” said the man.

  “You! You have the fucking nerve to accuse me of trespassing.” Cameron lunged at the man, who anticipated Cameron’s reaction and deftly ducked out of the way.

  “You stinking son of a cowardly bitch,” said Cameron. “Why don’t you put your fist where your mouth is?” He lunged again, but the woman, who, though taller than me, barely reached Cameron’s chest, stepped between them as if they were two toddlers.

  “Cameron, I think it best that you clear out.” Her voice was clipped: not rude, just emotionless. Her clear blue eyes were unblinking as they stood looking at each other. I thought some signal passed between them, but the moment was so fleeting that I couldn’t be sure.

  “It’s not a good idea to come around here,” she said.

  “Is that a threat, Miz Mitchell?” said Cameron with a heavy emphasis on the “Ms.”

  “No, just a friendly piece of advice.”

  He snorted, and then a slow smile spread across his face like lava across a valley, vindictive and delighted at some thought in his head. He turned to me.

  “The only person I know that camps up there is that bastard who started all this. Must be his goddamned body. Serve him bloody well right, the nosey parker, trying to tell us what to do. As if he knows piss-all about forestry. Well, to hell with him and with all of you. I hope you fry in hell and I’ll supply the devil with the fuel you lot are trying to martyr.”

  He spat the words out like a bad taste he was happy to get rid of. He turned and got in his truck, slammed the door with exaggerated force, and floored it, sending gravel spraying out at us as he roared away.

  “What the hell was that all about?” I asked, hoping that words might make my knees behave. I looked at the man, whose face had gone several shades paler.

  He pinned me with his eyes, wild and sweaty, stumbled around his words, got his tongue in the right spot, and whispered, “What body?”

  Ryan, who hadn’t heard the question, turned to me and said, “I only just bumped into these two down by the biology station when I heard you yelp. Leslie Mitchell and Don Allenby, Cordi O’Callaghan.”

  The woman inclined her head, but the man didn’t seem to notice the introductions at all.

  “Who was that guy?” asked Ryan, jerking his head in the direction of the departing truck.

  Don’s voice came again, louder, verging on hysteria.

  “What body?” He was nervously wringing his hands and the sweat glistened on his forehead.

  “His name is Cameron,” said Leslie, who glanced worriedly at Don before repeating his question. “What body?”

  “A couple of hours ago we found a body up river at the beginning of the portage around the falls. I was about to tell you when we heard my sister yelp. We need to contact the police,” said Ryan.

  “Oh, Jesus.” Don shook his head from side to side with a half moan.

  “For god’s sake, Don, get a hold of yourself,” snapped Leslie. She turned and looked at me. “Where?”

  “We found it near the water about a hundred yards from a campsite of some sort.”

  Don groaned and whimpered. “Oh, God. It’s Jake.

  It’s gotta be Diamond. Oh, Jesus.”

  “For Pete’s sake, pull yourself together,” said Leslie, looking curiously at Don.

  “That’s his campsite up there. He’s the only one who stays up there,” moaned Don. “He was due back tomorrow. It’s not my fault. If he hadn’t returned I was to give out the call. We all do that for each other. We go into the bush so often to do our fieldwork. It’s mostly crown land. All our study sites are up this way, we’re all biologists of some description or other. I work with small mammals: rabbits and things like that. Jake works with large mammals: Canada lynx, sometimes bobcat. Leslie here’s a moose woman. And we do a lot of fieldwork. Our base station is the building around the corner, down the road. We use it as a jumping off spot for say a week, a month in the field at a time. Leslie and I …”

  After this long speech he wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. “But Jake knew the bush, unbelievable he was. Not a better man than Jake in the bush. How could this happen to him? How could it be Jake? What the hell happened?”

  Leslie stopped the flow of words with a chop of her hand.

  “For Christ’s sake, Don, pipe down. It may not be Jake. It’s probably some poor sucker who got lost and panicked. Jake’s too much of a bushman to get into trouble, and he’s as healthy as an ox. He’ll be along to tell us all about it. Besides, whoever it is, there’s nothing we can do right now but get through to the police and report it.”

  She looked at me and Ryan. “There’s a CB radio in my car down the road. We can use that. Cell phones don’t work up here — too remote.”

  We walked in silence. Jake Diamond. The name rang some distant bell in my mind. I did of course know of him as a mammalogist, but it was for something else that this little bell tolled.

  “It’s Jake. I know it is. It’s Jake,” wailed Don with such sudden conviction it made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t help but think that this trembling basket case knew something the rest of us didn’t.

  chapter five

  “What’s this I hear about you finding a dead body? In pieces, no less. I’m gone three short weeks and you get yourself into trouble.”

  I was standing at my office window looking down at the pavement five flights below, feeling like a washed-out watercolour, bits of me fading into the early morning air, thoughts running into each other, creating mud. The early morning sun glinted off the sidewalk below, and the students rushed to make their 9:00 a.m. classes. At the sound of Martha’s deep guttural purr I turned in relief. Ma
rtha Bathgate literally filled the doorway of my puny office.

  “Really, Martha. Who told you he was in pieces?” Martha had a habit of being able to take my mind off myself and aim it at something productive. She was sometimes even able to dispel my sad moods before they spiralled down into darkness. If only I could figure out how she did it, I might be able to prevent depression from ever getting hold of me again. Unlikely, though; I’d fought it all my life.

  Martha winked knowingly at me. “I never reveal my sources, you know that. It simply wouldn’t do.”

  I shared Martha with two other assistant profs who didn’t rate their own lab techs, let alone decent office space. But I felt lucky: no one could replace Martha, even working for me full-time. She was my technician, secretary, bodyguard against students, friend, and jack-of-all-trades, who happened to remind me of a tennis ball, round and bouncy. Her black curly shoulder-length hair sprang like a wire mop from her head — cut page-boy fashion it made her face even rounder. Her features were tiny and, although almost eclipsed by the excess weight, they were beautiful, as though designed for fat and not for lean, and her age seemed to have hovered around forty-five for years. In fact, no one even knew her real age. Everything else about her was round as well: round pudgy hands, round belly and legs, short and squat, and now her mouth pursed into a round O. She made me think of the snowmen Ryan and I used to make: three round balls for the body, round raisins for the mouth, and small bright black eyes set against a white face.

  “I’m right though? About the pieces? But where in the name of God is Dumoine? That’s where you found him, isn’t it? I’ve missed all the news reports, except yesterday’s. Fill me in. There was no Canadian news in Bermuda.” It was a demand. Martha was the only person I had ever met who knew everything about everyone before they did, without being resented for it. I didn’t even try to keep the smile out of my voice. Gossip was Martha’s lifeblood, but at least she went to great pains to get it right.

  “Dumoine. It’s up the Ottawa River about two and a half hours from here on the Quebec side. It’s a medium-sized town, and the local police were supremely suspicious of the whole mess. Apparently dead bodies just don’t pop up routinely there, the implication being that they pop up routinely everywhere else. They asked me if I was sure it was a human body, if ‘perchance’ it might not be a dead moose or deer.”

  “As if you couldn’t tell the difference!” huffed Martha indignantly. She was nothing if not loyal.

  “To be fair, they’ve had some woman calling in all kinds of false alarms over the years, dead gophers that look like dead babies, the ribs of a cat mistaken for human remains. How can you mistake a dead gopher for a baby? Anyway, they had no end of stories from her. They thought I was her. It seems our voices sound alike.” I spread out my hands in mock self-defence. “When I finally chiselled a word into the conversation and told them that this body was wearing a man’s size-ten boots, they advised me that they’d be along. We waited hours it seems — since the body was dead and in a remote area there was no huge hurry. Someone else had said the same thing earlier. Rather crass, I thought. In the end, they didn’t need us, to our great relief. The two biologists waiting with us knew by our description exactly where the body was and they made an ID of sorts.”

  “Two biologists? Anyone we know?”

  “I’d heard of them, because some profs from here have collaborated with some of the profs at their university, Pontiac it’s called, but I hadn’t met them before. A lot of their study sites are up near Dumoine. They have a biology station up there.”

  I should have known a short answer like that would not satisfy Martha. She put her hands on her hips and waited with eyebrows raised, until I was forced to continue.

  “They were a rum pair, two mammalogists — Leslie Mitchell and Don Allenby. They didn’t do much talking while we waited for the cops, but then I suppose they were worried it was their colleague lying up there in the bush. Rightly so, it now seems. The cops took down our names and addresses and thanked us and then turfed us out. Allenby escorted them up to the campsite.”

  “That’s it then? No inquest, nothing? You don’t have to get up there and tell your grisly story and get mis-quoted in the papers and bring the top university brass down on you?”

  Martha had a running battle with the newspapers. She was convinced they all lied through their pens and hid behind their editors when the accusations started to fly.

  “They did the autopsy at the little university in Dumoine. The cops called and said there would be no inquest as it was pretty straightforward. Autopsy results concluded it was death by bear. A blow to the back of the head and neck eventually killed him. It was not a quick death, though. The rest of the mess was mauling. Case closed.”

  “Nasty way to go. Being mauled by a bear, and no one to hear your calls.” Martha shivered and then added, “It must have been one of these rogue bears that come sneaking up on decent folk and, without so much as a by-your-leave, swat them like pestering flies.”

  “That’s what the conservation guy thinks. Apparently a team of wildlife enforcers went up there to shoot the poor devil. They’re not going to trap this one and move him somewhere else, not after he’s killed a man.”

  “Damn right,” said Martha with an indignant look spreading over her face.

  “C’mon, Martha. Most black bears are more afraid of us than we are of them, but a rogue bear, one that attacks without provocation, is different. Too bad they give all black bears a bad name.”

  “Yeah, well, no one in their right mind would want a rogue bear in their backyard, and with so many crazy canoeists like you gallivanting through those woods, there’s no safe place for a rogue bear anymore. Too dangerous. Once a man-killer always a man-killer, I say.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had had a sudden unpleasant jolting in my stomach as I thought back to the open tins, the food in the campsite, the pack up the tree. I was thinking of the way the sun had fallen across the body, its rays peaceful and warm, quiet and soft, beauty in such horror. The unease was back, and I suddenly realized why. I hadn’t seen any sign of any bears in that area. I thought about the chocolate bar still in the tent and the full cans of food and drink unmarked by any teeth or claws. There should have been signs that a bear had been there. There hadn’t been: no claw marks, no garbage dragged from the campsite, no droppings, no drag marks, no signs at the mess tent or near the food pack, nothing to indicate a bear had been there except for the horror of the body. But if it had never been there, then how or where had Diamond been killed by a bear?

  I brushed the thoughts from my mind. I didn’t have time for them, and besides, it didn’t concern me, curious as it was. I glanced out the window. Students of all descriptions were flinging a Frisbee about the grassed lawn across the street. I could see the library to the west and beyond it the Ottawa River framed by a stunning electric blue sky. The city sprawled off to the right and Gatineau, Québec, lay across the river. I liked to pretend that I could make out the Eardley Escarpment where my little log cabin lay snuggled in the most beautiful of valleys within the Outaouais. Wishful thinking though. I didn’t live that close.

  “So who was this poor guy?” Martha brought me back to the present.

  “We didn’t learn anything at all up in the bush. But when we came back and the police phoned to tell me who it was and ask more questions, I did a literature search on him.”

  “You mean you actually got that old computer to work for you?” I ignored her. Martha could make the computer turn somersaults for her but I seemed to paralyze it and funny things happened. I wasn’t about to admit to Martha that I had had to ask the computer guy to help me.

  “He was a mammalogy professor at Pontiac University — a well-known and it seems well-liked mammalogist. He’s a cat man. He’s studied all the North American cats and been to Africa studying cheetahs and helped with breeding of endangered species. He was studying the Canada lynx. I ran his name through my database and it lit up l
ike a neon light. The guy’s written dozens of papers on various mammals. Quite a wonder boy. Lectured all over the world and has written several well-reviewed books about the cats of Canada. His name crops up at least twice a month in all the major newspapers.”

  “Was he also a columnist or something?” asked Martha.

  “Actually, no. He’s at the other end of the media stick. He gets written about. He’s a real wilderness warrior. Couldn’t abide any destruction of anything natural and wild. A real hard-line environmentalist. He’s leading the fight to have logging banned up in the area around Dumoine.”

  Martha said excitedly, “You mean the guy with the black curly hair and deep sexy voice that was on all the newscasts a month or so ago?”

  I looked at the news clippings piled on top of my desk, rifled through it, and pulled out a piece with Jake Diamond’s photo and looked at the curly black hair and warm smile.

  “He’s the one who single-handedly defied the loggers, erected a barricade to stop the logging trucks, and mobilized the masses. It’s been an unpleasant and heated battle. A lot of bad words on all sides, I gather.”

  I paused, momentarily discomfited, remembering the light in Cameron’s eye as it slowly dawned on him that the body might be Diamond’s. It had been a very unpleasant moment to watch joy in another man’s eye at the mention of death. Here certainly was no friend. Leslie had been so cold, so matter-of-fact, and Don had simply been what? Upset? Horrified? No, that wasn’t it. What, then? Frightened? That was it, frightened, but for himself or someone else? Maybe he was just afraid of bears. Academic, really, but I hated it when things didn’t fit neatly. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that something weird was happening here.

  “I gather Diamond won an injunction to stop the logging and it was overturned. They erected a barricade last month to stop the beginning of the logging. They set up a camp. Dozens of protesters, including children. There were a lot of arrests, and when the injunction was overturned, there was some sabotage of equipment so the loggers can’t start until next month and they are fuming mad. No one’s taking up his battle and the loggers are gearing up. They plan to start on the east side of Dumoine right away. The north side is slated for cutting next fall.”