Forever Dead

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  “Jesus, Cordi. That means someone tried to kill us.” He said it as a statement, and there was no mistaking the emotion in his voice.

  “Whoever it was must have thought they’d destroyed the larvae until they read the newspaper article, and shortly after they struck again.”

  “So you’re saying that whoever it was who sent us into those rapids did it because of some bugs? What are you getting at, Cordi?” Ryan’s voice made me feel as though I ought to admit myself to the nearest psychiatric hospital.

  “Sounds crazy, but not because of the insects. Because of what the insects might tell us. Remember what I told you about forensic entomology? What if the insects said Diamond died three weeks sooner than the coroner’s report? Or that he died inside a concrete bunker and not outside in the woods?”

  “Isn’t that pretty extreme? How would you get a bear inside a concrete bunker for God’s sake? Remember, he was killed by a bear, so what does it matter if he was moved or not? The cops are interested in who did the deed and they already know that.”

  “Do they?”

  Ryan laid down the cedar rail he was preparing to put into place and stared at me.

  “So what you’re saying is that Diamond died in a cedar forest and somebody went to a lot of trouble to move the body afterwards, back to his permanent campsite.”

  “Exactly. But why do it? What possible purpose could it serve?”

  “Maybe someone was with him when the bear attacked and panicked and couldn’t help him. Maybe someone tried to help him, carried him, and got as far as the campsite and then panicked again when they realized he was dead. Now they’re just too frightened and ashamed to come forward.”

  I thought back to Don’s behaviour and wondered if Ryan’s theory could apply.

  “But why fumigate my insects then?”

  “Suppose whoever it was didn’t want the body found in the area where Diamond actually died and they were afraid your larvae would expose them?”

  “Expose what, though? What could there be about an area that makes it important enough for someone to move a body such a distance and then nearly kill us to kill the grubs? And then come back to finish them off in my lab?”

  Ryan said nothing.

  “I don’t know, Ryan. All I do know is that I need to find out more about the circumstances surrounding Diamond’s death.”

  “Cordi, I don’t like that look on your face. What are you planning?”

  “I guess I’ll have to call the coroner and pump him for information, and then go up there for a couple days and see if I can locate this cedar forest.”

  “So you think that whoever took your disks is connected in some way to Diamond’s death?

  “I’m sure of it, Ryan, and it’s my only lead. I can’t let this go now. I’ve got too much at stake. So what about it? Will you do a search and get the coroner’s name for me?”

  We walked down to the barn to a small side door and up into what had once been a small hayloft and was now Ryan’s office and darkroom.

  Ryan tapped away at the computer keys, a nice soft whirring sound that I always thought sounded so much more intelligent, urgent, and critical than the old pounding of a typewriter key.

  “He’s in here somewhere,” said Ryan as he accessed the news database. “I don’t know why you don’t just phone the cops and ask for his name.”

  “Because they’ll want to know why and I’m no good at lying, and they’ll think I’m nuts if I tell them my theory.”

  “They’d have a right to think you’re nuts, and what makes you think the coroner in charge of this case will be any more receptive to you?”

  I shrugged, my stomach already in knots over what I might say to him. I walked over to the window and looked out across the fields. Ryan’s office had a beautiful view of the escarpment, and at this time of day, with the sun turned to gold on the cornstalks, it looked like a piece of a paradise.

  “He’s an academic. Maybe I can appeal to that side of him.”

  The quiet pinging went on. Ryan was into the newspaper database now, scanning the papers from the day after we had found the body. While Ryan worked on his computer I rummaged through our camping gear. It was gathering mould in the corner of his mudroom where we kept all our camping gear and where we’d just dumped our packs after our trip. I began sorting through it and making a pile of laundry. We’d both studiously ignored it, hoping the other would clean them out and throw the sweaty clothes into the laundry. I sighed as I pulled out sleeping bags and clothes. I separated them into two piles, “dirty” and “okay for another year.” I picked up my khaki pants, every pocket bulging. I threw out all the garbage and checked the other non-garbage pockets, pulling out my knife and a wad of scrunched-up blue paper. At first I couldn’t remember what it was, and I unscrunched it carefully. It was covered in doodles and scribbles. It had been smeared by the rain and the rapids into almost illegible handwriting. I could make out what looked like the word “antlers.” Then someone had scribbled and circled a few lines; there was something that looked like “red welt ock” followed by three numbers and something that looked like “NV.”

  I shrugged and tossed it in with the other garbage.

  “Here it is.” Ryan’s voice interrupted my thoughts and I came over and stood behind him, peering at the black letters on the Macintosh screen.

  “Duncan MacPherson.”

  chapter nine

  It was some time before I actually got through to Dr. MacPherson, partly because I dreaded the call but also because once I got my nerve up and realized I had no choice, protective secretaries at the anatomy lab at the university and at the Coroner’s Office in Dumoine gave me the runaround. Finally I pleaded an emergency involving life and death and used the “Dr.” before my name without mentioning that I was not a medical doctor.

  I introduced myself over the phone as Dr. Cordi O’Callaghan, but before I could tell him why I was calling he said, in a deep, throaty burr, “Cordi O’Callaghan? We’ve met.”

  “We have?” I racked my brains but the name was not familiar at all. How embarrassing.

  “At the butterflies and moths convention, Albuquerque. I showed you my luna moth job.”

  Memory flooded back. There was only one guy who had had a beautiful, green-yellow luna moth with its spectacular 4.5-inch wingspan and two long elegant tails.

  “Right! I remember you. You’re the one …” I stumbled to a halt, the unspoken words hanging in the silence worse than if I’d said them.

  “That’s right,” he finished, chuckling. “The one with a nose to rival Pinocchio.”

  Oh God, I thought. Why was I always putting my foot in it?

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —”

  “It’s all right. It is an identifying characteristic, after all.”

  It sure was, I thought. I couldn’t remember anything else about him except his nose! It dominated his entire body!

  “What can I do for you? Something about Jake Diamond, I presume? You were the one to find the body, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, that’s right. I’d forgotten the police would have told you that. I’d like to get some information from you about the autopsy results, if that’s okay.”

  His voice dropped an octave, became guarded, cautious, professional. “Surely you know that that information is confidential unless, between friends, there’s a damn good reason it shouldn’t be. Is there?”

  Oh God, I thought. This isn’t going to work. My mind went blank and then, in disbelief, I heard myself say, “I think his death might not be as straightforward as it sounds.”

  There was a long silence. I could hear him breathing at the other end as we both took in the implications of what I had said. I thought he was going to hang up, and it served me right, too, for putting my cards on the table right away, but instead, surprisingly, his voice warmed … and was there just possibly a trace of amusement in it?

  “I think perhaps we had better meet, my girl. Tomorrow? Nine a.m?”


  “I can manage that, thanks,” I said, biting off the “my boy” before it got past my tongue. It wouldn’t do to alienate him.

  “Would you mind bringing your butterfly keys? I have a butterfly I’d like you to identify.”

  I smiled as I hung up. So that was it, was it? You scratch my back, I scratch yours, I thought.

  The following day it was pouring rain and windy as hell. It took me just under two hours to get from my farm to Dumoine and then another twenty minutes to locate the anatomy building, which for some reason wasn’t on the university campus, which housed one of Canada’s first northern medical schools. There was nowhere nearby to park, and my raincoat and light canvas hat just weren’t enough to keep the wet from running down my neck as I walked back from my parked car. The rain was horizontal and my shoes were squelching by the time I reached the building.

  The pathology department was in an old turn-ofthe-century stone building near the centre of town. I walked up the wide stone steps and through the large wooden doors. It was an imposing building, built with grace and built to last. I didn’t bother looking for the elevator. It was only three flights up and I hated the cramped feel of elevators anyway.

  On the third floor I walked down the corridor looking for room 303. As I neared the end of the hall I could hear the quiet murmur of voices. The door to 303 was open and the murmurs were coming from there.

  I peered around the door. The room was huge, with tall lead-paned windows climbing to the vaulted ceiling, the massive stone arches pink from the granite from which they were built. There were perhaps eighty students gathered in groups of four around tables draped with white cloths. They were whispering in the quiet, almost clandestine atmosphere. The sickly sweet smell of formaldehyde permeated everything.

  I juddered to a halt when I realized, with a sickening gag, that all those shrouded forms were cadavers. If he’d wanted to unnerve me he had certainly succeeded. My eyes clung to the figure closest to me with uneasy fascination, as if looking at just one would make it seem better. I’d never been in a human anatomy lab before, with dozens of still, wrinkled figures lying prone on all those tables. Some were still partially draped where the students hadn’t moved on with their scalpels, others lay exposed, the white shroud missing and their pasty, leathery, wrinkled bodies half dissected.

  I pulled my eyes away from the surreal scene and reached out for the doorframe to steady myself. There was a tall sturdily built man seated at a desk just inside the door, his back to me. When I’d regained my equilibrium I cleared my throat, and he turned around.

  No mistaking him. The nose stood out like a huge tuber someone had unkindly stuck to his face. I forced myself to look at his eyes, grey-blue; his grey-silver hair, almost non-existent; his mouth, behind a thick grizzled beard, all paling into insignificance next to that gargantuan nose. If anyone could claim the right to cosmetic surgery this man could. I marvelled at the character of a man who could go through life literally thumbing his nose at it all and not letting it bother him.

  He must be one hell of a self-confident old bugger, I thought, to continually parry the looks of strangers and remain as oblivious as he appeared to be. Perhaps he had adopted his nose as a kind of trademark, an expression of himself. It certainly was unique.

  He rose quickly, agilely, stretching out his hand in greeting. He was a big man. He had the look of someone who had once been all muscle, taut, tight, and bull-doggish, a professional athlete, but now the discipline of daily workouts had been too much for him and his muscle had softened to fat.

  “Come in, come in,” he said with a grin, the words low, almost whispered, in a voice studiously kept under control. It was a rich deep voice, straining at the invisible brakes that forced it out as a whisper. He reached out his massive paw, and I watched in fascination as my hand completely disappeared in his.

  “We can talk in my office. Don’t want to disturb the young ’uns.” He waved his free arm vaguely in the direction of his students while still bear-pawing me, and I wondered if I’d ever see my hand again. I’d released the pressure several times, but when he didn’t respond I pressed again and then went limp. He didn’t seem to notice, but eventually, he gave me back my hand.

  As he led me back through the lab to his office I studiously kept my eyes anywhere but on those shrouded figures. The sickening smell of formaldehyde had never been so horrid. The anatomy labs I had supervised, with dead rabbits and cats, didn’t quite smell like this. I felt dizzy. Having never seen a dead human body before this year I was certainly getting my fill these last few weeks.

  We walked past shelves of books and coat hooks with lab coats covered in God knows what, to a small glassed-in area on three sides that was strategically placed to overlook the entire lab. Like a commander at the head of his troops, he commanded a full view of all the medical students.

  He held the door open for me and watched in amusement as I finally gave up to some inner need and looked up over the room of students, quietly going about the business of dissection.

  “They seem so … so …” I couldn’t find the words to describe the cool, casual way in which the students were conducting themselves, compared to the stomach-writhing mess I was going through. He was watching me with an amused quirk to his smile.

  “Relaxed? Calm? Nonchalant?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” I turned back, glad not to have to view all those silent, shrouded figures.

  “You think so?” Duncan grinned mischievously. “They’re keyed up tighter than a wound-up toy soldier. Watch this.”

  As he spoke he picked up a metal ruler from his desktop, held it between his two fingers, stepped out the door, and let the ruler drop to the floor with a clatter. Small as the noise was, every student in the room jumped involuntarily, like a pre-programmed glitch in a computer or birds changing course in mid-flight, all in unison, and then, guiltily, as if jumping like that were an embarrassment, they went back to their dissection, pretending that nothing had happened.

  I watched in sick fascination as one student threw something at another and yelled a little too loudly and a little too forced, “Have a heart, my friend.” Dear God, was that really a heart? I thought. The following eruption of laughter sounded forced, as if by laughing at death its finality could somehow be diminished. Perhaps they needed some way of kidding themselves in order to get through it.

  Duncan’s grin was almost as big as his nose.

  “They hold it in very well — most of the time,” he chuckled. “Have to, but when you’re that keyed up — these are all first-year med students — you can’t hide your anxiety when something startles you, no matter how many crass jokes you make to hide your feelings. I’ve been teaching anatomy students two days a week for twenty-five years and that trick has never failed, even when I warn them I’m going to try it when they least expect it. It’s the ones that tell the raunchiest jokes that jump the highest. I could probably do a personality study on that — he who jumps highest is least likely to have come to terms with death. Doing the same thing in the lecture hall doesn’t even get their attention.”

  I wondered what would happen to the poor wretches if Duncan dropped a stack of books instead of a ruler. Did first-year med students know how to give cardiopulmonary resuscitation?

  He opened the door for me and motioned me inside, gently closing the door behind him. His office was small, almost as small as mine, but meticulously tidy. Every surface was piled with a neat stack of books or file folders, a computer, printer, telephone, and bookshelves of anatomy and pathology texts and forensics. A photo of Duncan in military dress stood on the windowsill. What war was that, I wondered.

  There was one other chair besides Duncan MacPherson’s plush upholstered affair — a hard, straight-backed, unpadded, uncomfortable-looking thing designed to keep visiting to a minimum. He grinned when he saw me looking at it.

  “My students would stay in here gabbing forever if they had a comfortable spot to place their butts. Now, my girl, tell me wh
y you think his death isn’t so straightforward. An old man like myself could use some lively spice in my life.” The lilt of laughter in his words softened the intent. The last words were full of challenging amusement.

  I said, “What would you say if I told you Diamond’s body had been moved after he died?”

  Duncan shrugged. “Not much. Bears are strong. They can drag a carcass.”

  “This was over a mile of rough terrain and across a river to boot.”

  Duncan raised his eyebrows questioningly. “That, I admit, dear girl, is a bit of an aberration. You’d better explain how you think you know all this.”

  “When my brother, Ryan, and I discovered the body there was no sign of any bears having been in the area. I remember it niggled in my mind at the time, especially since there were tins of sardines, food, and drink at the campsite, even a candy bar in the tent.”

  “You mean any self-respecting bear in the area would have been expected to pillage the food pack and take the chocolate bar from the tent?”

  “That’s right. Bears are omnivores, they’ll eat anything, and their sense of smell is infamous. Just a tube of toothpaste left in a tent has been known to draw a bear.”

  “But there was no bear sign.”

  “No, there was no bear sign.”

  I then told him about my discovery of cedar twigs in Diamond’s wounds, the pupating larvae, the location of the closest cedar forest, and the theft of my disks. When I had finished, he said, “The autopsy did reveal cedar twigs in his wounds, so I can corroborate that part of your story. He certainly didn’t pick them up on a stroll through the woods. They were driven in by the bear’s claws.”

  I nodded. So far so good. “The topographical maps indicate that the nearest cedar grove to where Diamond was found is a good mile away and on the other side of the river. So I think he was moved at least that far by someone who, for some unknown reason, didn’t want his body found where he died.”