Forever Dead

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  I could feel the sweat standing out on my forehead and I gripped the wheel harder as I tried to control the shaking. I guided the Land Rover over to the edge of the road and stopped. I took a deep breath and looked over at Martha, who was frozen in a moment of pure terror, her eyes wide and bulging, her body still, and her face drained of all but its rouge. Still gripping the wheel I sank my head on my arms and breathed deeply. Was it my imagination or had that truck taken its own sweet time about swerving, my reflexes being all that lay between us and death. God was I being paranoid!

  “You stupid fuckin’ idiots!” The voice was loud and menacing and unpleasantly familiar. I whipped my head off my arms and looked in my side-view mirror. Cameron was hoofing it toward the Land Rover from the direction in which the truck had disappeared.

  “What the hell are you doing on this road? You could have got us all killed, you know that? The driver just managed to keep the rig on the road. He’s pissing his pants right now. Jesus.”

  I rolled down the window. Cameron’s big red beefy face approached like a storm cloud.

  Martha was squirming in her seat. “We did? We?” she croaked. “It was his stupid truck going too fast in the middle of the road on a corner that nearly killed us.”

  I motioned Martha to be quiet and controlled my own seething anger.

  “You both okay?” I asked. He stopped, bewildered by my question, his anger spluttering, but then he recovered.

  “This is a logging road, lady. You shouldn’t be …” He stopped suddenly and peered at me more closely. “Hey, aren’t you the nosey parker who found Diamond’s body? Yeah, sure, you were the one pawing around in my truck that day. You were with those damn screaming greenies. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Trying to find out who murdered Diamond.” Why the hell did I say that? I thought. But it was too late. I couldn’t take it back, even with Martha’s face staring at me incredulously.

  “Murdered?” Cameron’s voice rose an octave, but its loudness never varied. “Who the hell’s talking murder here?” He looked behind him quickly as if making sure no one was listening, his eyes darting around like worried marbles.

  “Look, lady, we don’t need any more trouble around here. Leave it alone. It’s all in the past now. Whatever happened out there that night, it’s all over. The guy’s dead.”

  “You hunt?” I asked on impulse. He looked at me, taken aback, and a look of pure calculation flitted across his face.

  “What of it?”

  “Bear?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Were you the one who shot the bear they say killed Diamond?”

  “Damn right.” Bingo.

  “How did you find it?”

  “What the hell’s this got to do with anything?” he said.

  I said nothing, and the silence lengthened until Cameron could stand it no more.

  “We baited him. Threw out some old fish where we knew he’d be — near Diamond’s permanent camp there — and then waited until he came and then we nailed him. Easy as anything and they’re suckers for fish.”

  “Is that how Diamond died? Someone baited him and threw him to the bear?”

  Cameron leapt back from the truck as if he’d been bitten.

  “Jesus, lady, are you nuts?”

  I shrugged and took a different tack, aware that Martha was squirming beside me.

  “Why didn’t you wait for the wildlife guys to shoot the bear? Why do it yourself?”

  Cameron licked his lips and wiped the sweat forming on his brow, looked behind him and leaned forward.

  “We’d had some trouble with a bear. A real rogue bear he was. One of the guys got mauled just before Diamond got nailed.”

  “You?” I pointed to the scars on his arms. He kept quiet. I tried again.

  “Who knew about the rogue bear?”

  Cameron shuffled his feet and looked away. “We kept it pretty much to ourselves. Didn’t want any trouble up here.”

  “Too bad you waited until the day after Diamond’s body was discovered to get the bear.” I paused. “Or was it?”

  “What the hell are you getting at?”

  “You were pretty angry at Diamond that night at the information meeting. You looked pretty damn smug after belting him one. You must have felt pretty good when his body was identified.”

  “Sure, I was angry. You would be too. The fool was looking to take away my livelihood and couldn’t see my problems for his bloody trees. But that doesn’t mean I wanted him dead. Transferred somewhere far away would have suited me just fine.”

  I could hear the sound of a chainsaw somewhere deep in the woods and a lone mosquito hovered around Cameron as he glared at me. I shrugged, feeling considerably less confident than I looked.

  He gripped the side of the window and said, “If you’re fool enough to be thinking murder, leave me out of it. There’re people a lot happier than me that Diamond bought it. Go ask Raymond about his hot-pants wife. She couldn’t keep out of Diamond’s bed.” He gave me a lopsided leer and said, “Stay off these roads if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Nah, just a friendly warning.”

  With that he slapped the window and, suddenly laughing, strode back down the road. Martha and I exchanged glances.

  “Busy man, that Diamond,” said Martha.

  chapter nineteen

  I shoved the Land Rover into gear and headed on down toward the turn to the biology station. A small red convertible, top down, was signalling to turn onto the main road, and I recognized Roberta at the wheel. I pulled up alongside her, rolling down my window.

  “Just wanted to thank you again for rescuing me.” Roberta smiled. “Anybody would have done the same, you know.”

  “Any news about Don yet?”

  “Nothing. Not a word. Three days and no sign of him anywhere.”

  “He had a lot to be depressed about, didn’t he?”

  Roberta jerked her head up and stared at me, the wine-dark specks in her blue eyes standing out like the reverse of snowflakes on black velvet.

  “He was cooking his data, wasn’t he?”

  She tried to stare me down but her heart wasn’t in it and she looked deflated.

  “How did you know?” she finally asked quietly.

  “He told me, the day I was to meet him. He said he could explain it all and not to tell anyone until he had spoken to me.”

  Roberta smiled a long sad smile. Finally she said, “He’s a good man, Don is. It must have broken him to have to resort to cheating like that. I knew he was having trouble paying his bills for his daughter. I’d even questioned some of his data. It didn’t seem to fit, but he was good at what he did. I never suspected he was cooking it until he admitted to me he was in deep shit. He only spoke to me because he knew that I might be affected just by association. He is my supervisor.”

  “So you knew that Diamond was going to tell the Dean and that your own thesis would be suspect? Rather convenient for the two of you that he died before the cat was let out of the bag.” God, I felt horrible saying this to the woman who had saved my life, but I had to get to the bottom of things and I knew being nice wouldn’t cut it.

  Roberta stared at me, a hollow, vacant look in her eyes.

  “I guess you could say that, but you don’t understand. Fate was really mean to him. He felt he had to choose between his daughter and his ethics. When Diamond found out, Don came up here to his camp to try and reason with him, to get him to give him some time to redo the paper, undo the damage.”

  “He came up here? When?”

  Roberta hesitated, looked down at her hands, and then shrugged.

  “It was a bunch of days before Diamond was found dead. He left the barricade and sneaked up to talk to him. When he came back he was upset, white and trembling. He said Diamond had agreed to wait, but he was really uptight. It seemed odd at the time, and since then I’ve thought about it a lot. He could have been there when Diam
ond died, you know.” She paused as if she felt she’d said too much, and then she blurted out, “Don’t you see? His daughter was far more important to him than his work. He was willing to risk anything for her. Can’t you understand that?”

  “I can understand it, but I can’t condone it,” I said, feeling like a righteous prick. “His research is based on data that has been made up and he was going to publish it. Now that Diamond’s dead he’s off the hook.”

  “If you don’t go and blab it, he is. But that’s why I’m so worried about his disappearance. In his state of mind he could do something really dumb.”

  And with that she put her car in gear and left me with an unanswered question on my tongue.

  Martha was busting a gut beside me.

  “Cordi, did you hear that? Don went to see Diamond around the time he died.”

  “That means he might have seen what happened. Or he might have found him already dead and was just too afraid the police would think he had had something to do with it to report the body.”

  I thought back to the first time I had met Don: nervous, jumpy, so sure it was Diamond up there in the bush. Too sure?

  “What if he stumbled on the killer moving the body back?” suggested Martha.

  “What if he was the killer? He could have gone up the night before, killed Diamond in the cedar forest, and for some reason couldn’t move the body, so he went back for it the next night and used the barricade as an alibi.”

  “Except that Roberta knew he went to see him.”

  “Yes, but she had a lot to lose if any of it came out.”

  Our conversation came to an abrupt end as we rounded the corner and there in front of us stood the lumber camp, carved out of the woods in record time with bulldozers and backhoes and other equipment I didn’t recognize. I drove down the makeshift street until I saw a handwritten sign on a door saying “Office.” I parked and we got out of the Land Rover and looked around. The place was a hodgepodge of trailers, prefabs, and machinery. I headed toward the office but stopped when I realized Martha wasn’t with me.

  “Come on,” I said.

  Martha shook her head at me. “You go on ahead. I’m going to check out the cookhouse.”

  “What about my life you were so worried about?” I asked.

  “Oh, you’re okay here. I’m going where the gossip is.” I watched as she gingerly picked her way through the muddy ruts, her bright crimson shift swaying around her like a tent as she headed off toward what appeared to be the cookhouse.

  I took a deep breath to gather my nerves. I was not looking forward to the conversation ahead because I didn’t know what to expect. I climbed the steps to the makeshift office, and as I held out my hand to knock on the door it was yanked open and Donaldson stood on the threshold.

  “Well now, what do we have here?” he said as his eyes roller-coastered over me, taking in every curve and valley in wide-eyed pleasure until they finally ambled back to my ice-cold brown eyes.

  We have a woman, in case you haven’t met one before, I thought while I offered him my hand. “Cordi O’Callaghan. I’m here to see Ray.”

  “Right-o. Hey, Ray! We got a live one!” he yelled, ignoring my hand and ushering me in with his arm draped over my shoulders.

  Ray came to greet me, glanced reproachfully at Donaldson as I shrugged off his arm, and hastily shook my hand.

  “You’ll have to forgive Donaldson. He’s from the old ‘letch’ school.”

  Donaldson’s smile became sweetness and light.

  “He’s here on sufferance,” said Ray, shooting an intense frown, full of meaning, at Donaldson. “Just here to see where I’ve decided he should start cutting first.”

  Donaldson cracked his smile and was about to speak when Ray waved him into silence and said, “This is the Doctor Ph.D. I told you about who found Diamond’s body. Thinks her data disks were swiped because of Diamond.”

  Donaldson’s pale blue eyes narrowed, and he and Ray exchanged glances. Donaldson stroked his chin with short stubby fingers but didn’t say a thing. Ray moved over to a table by the window.

  “Want some coffee?”

  I shook my head and watched as Ray poured some thick black liquid into the cup and then drowned it with milk and sugar. As I started to say something, a huge bulldozer rumbled by.

  “Are you cutting already?” I asked, startled.

  “No, but we’re finally gearing up now,” said Donaldson. “The injunction was only just overturned, but we want to get a head start. Ray and I and our foreman, Cameron, and a bunch of the lads have been up here since May without a break, setting up the camp.” When he saw the look of surprise on my face, he said, “Sometimes you gotta gamble in this business, and we knew we were going to win, that the injunction would be overturned.” He shrugged. “We didn’t want to lose precious time, and besides, we needed someone up here to guard all the equipment from the loonies at the barricade.”

  “She doesn’t need to know our entire history, Donaldson,” snapped Ray. He turned to me. “I’ve pulled out some topographic and vegetation maps of the company’s logging areas for you, as you asked on the phone. The company logs right across the country.” He pointed to the crown land areas where the company held timber licences throughout the east. They were extensive.

  “As you can see, the loss of this logging tract” — he pointed to the area where we were — “would make only a dent in their balance sheet, but the two mills in this area stand to lose their shirts.”

  “Yeah, mine in particular,” snorted Donaldson. “Just look at the map. Most of the area’s been logged around here.” He pointed to his mill, situated perfectly for the area now about to be logged, but otherwise surrounded mostly by logged forest. “If the logging had been stopped my mill would have been worth practically nothing, and I would have had to declare bankruptcy. We’d taken all the wood we could from the area except this and were hauling logs from a hundred miles away. It was not cost-effective. As it stands we have a buyer, thanks to Diamond’s death, and the court’s reversal of the injunction I can now retire, let the young guys make some bucks with it.”

  “You have a partner,” I said, stating it as a fact.

  “Yeah,” said Donaldson slowly, the word oozing out like molasses, as if reluctant to leave his lips. “Why do you ask?” he said cocking his head on one side like a bird and squinting at me.

  “Just curious. You said ‘we.’ I just wondered who ‘we’ is.”

  He un-cocked his head and said, “I have a silent partner.” He laughed. “A very silent partner.”

  “You mean Whyte?” asked Ray. Donaldson dragged his eyes away from me and squinted at Ray.

  “Yeah, Whyte. One hell of a lumberman was my partner. He started the mill, remember, brought me on board and treated me like a brother. He’d have throttled Diamond with his bare hands. When he died in a car crash I found he had left me fifty-one percent, and the rest went to his wife, on condition she not sell until their son turned thirty. Strings from the grave. The old bugger. He liked control, did Whyte. She was furious. Went back to using her maiden name, Santander, she was that mad.”

  I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “What happened to her?” I asked, risking the raking of those eyes for the end of the story I thought I already knew and wished I didn’t.

  “Quite sad, really. She and the kid had no money to live on. But she had spunk, I must say. Went out and got a job and put her kid through university and then her mind gave out on her, kinda shrank into nothingness. We tried to declare dividends, but the last five years have been hard and things were just too tight. The kid’s been supporting her, but I think it’s been rough.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Business had been bad for a number of years — there just wasn’t the lumber — and we couldn’t declare any dividends. About two years ago she came out to persuade me to sell, but by that time there was already controversy about the logging. Diamond had got on his h
igh horse, you see, and the worth of the mill plummeted because of the uncertainty. I had to tell her that her shares were not worth much with the controversy and all, and that we could command a much better price if she waited. I told her it would die down — I really believed it would at the time.”

  Ray laughed, “Nobody really knew what was going to happen. Diamond was so volatile, always coming up with some new trick. Anyway, with him gone the protest kind of died.”

  “And now the old lady’s son has contacted me,” added Donaldson, “and we have a firm offer that we’ve accepted.”

  My thoughts went back to Mrs. Santander in her strange clothes, and the tiny sparse house where she lived with Patrick. I remembered his quiet dignity and his protectiveness. Of all Diamond’s colleagues, only Patrick had had no motive for wanting Diamond dead. Now he did. And it made me want to cry.

  “I guess lots of people have reason to be happy he’s dead.” I said quietly.

  When no one said anything I looked up, suddenly aware of the silence in the room. Both men had stopped talking and were staring at me, their faces blank, smiles tight and withering. I could hear the crickets chirruping outside and the wind rustled through the trees, and I felt defeated. Trucks were moving around the complex getting ready to build a bridge across the river to the new stand of timber. I wanted to be somewhere else.

  “What kind of suggestion is that?” Donaldson’s voice was sharp, defensive, angry. I could read nothing in the blankness of his face or in the now granite coldness of his eyes. I wasn’t sure which I liked less, the frozen eyes or the soft, lecherous eyes of moments before. I suppressed a shiver, suddenly very glad I could-n’t read all that was in his mind.