Forever Dead (24 page)

“Jesus, are you really that stupid?” The camera caught Diamond's eyes glinting in the light as he shifted his attention to the logger. Shannon tugged on his arm again, but Diamond ignored her. It was like a barroom brawl. Diamond was looking for a fight. Cameron's face turned crimson with anger.

“Who you calling stupid?” Cameron took a deep breath as though trying to control his rising anger. “We
let the forest go along on its own and we waste it. You hear? Now that's stupid. It's like letting a field of corn go to seed. All that energy that went into making it wasted, if we don't harvest at the right time.”

“Attaboy, Cameron. You tell the bastard.”

Cameron turned and looked at his colleagues. Encouraged by their support, he turned his back on Diamond, raised his arms, and addressed them.

“We loggers like to think of the areas we log as one big happy family farm, and that's how we should run it, like a farm. Old growth is like an old cow. Farmers get rid of old cows that can't produce milk anymore. If he kept all his old cows he'd have no milk. You have to keep regenerating, and that means cutting.”

“All right,” someone yelled and the men and women around Cameron applauded and whistled.

“The problem is,” yelled Diamond above the din, “it's like selling rubies for a song. You're selling out your grandkids' future for a lousy buck. You just want to keep your own bloody job and to hell with the real cost to the country.”

“Damn right I do,” yelled Cameron as he faced Diamond. “And you're telling me you're not trying to do the same? I know all about you, Doctor Jake Diamond,” he said with a sneer. “We loggers aren't as dumb as everyone tries to paint us. We log the area and you lose your goddamned study site. All that work, poof, gone up in smoke, and maybe you lose tenure too, eh? Who gives a good goddamn about your fuckin' study animals when hundreds of jobs are at stake here?”

Cameron paused as applause broke out and whistles and stamping of feet filled the room.

Diamond clenched his fists and glared at Cameron. In a voice barely above a whisper he hissed, “Do you really think this is an issue about a couple of moose, a
few lynx, and a bunch of jobs? This is about the survival of the planet, survival of the plants that nourish it, and the animals that give it diversity. This is about the survival of the natural world that has given us cures for countless diseases, fed and clothed us, and now, by our own hand, we could be losing species to extinction at the rate of several a day. Who are we to say we are not destroying, even as I speak, that very plant or animal that holds the secret which would unlock the cure for cancer? So yeah, I'm not above using animals to stop the logging. If we had here in these woods a rare species like the spotted owls of the west coast that stopped all logging instantly there, I'd stop at nothing to tell the world.”

The camera panned over to a short stocky man who stood up.

“You tell him Donaldson,” someone yelled at him.

“I run the Donaldson Mill, the one that's for sale, and I can't find a damn buyer because of your shenanigans. Thank God we don't have spotted owls around here, is all I can say. This area was built on logging, and we have a good number of mills in the area and hundreds upon hundreds of people are employed in the lumber industry here. That represents big dollars.”

He turned and looked at the audience.

“This tract of land will keep my mill and the other mills in the area busy for five years. Without it, some of the mills will have to close, including mine. I'll have to lay off my workers and sell the mill for peanuts. I'm getting old and I was counting on the mill as my pension, so was my partner. Logging this hunk of crown land brings much-needed jobs to the area.”

“And five years from now they'll all be gone,” came a voice off-camera.

“I'm not talking about five years from now. I need trees to make my mill go now. If I don't get trees my job's
mud. I'll never sell the mill and I'll have to go on welfare. I'm too old to start a new career,” Donaldson said.

“Let me tell you something else, Diamond,” yelled Cameron. “We got families to think of. You got no right coming here and telling us the land gotta be left as it is, left nice and beautiful for its own sake. Bullshit. Nice and beautiful doesn't put a meal on the table, doesn't clothe our kids. Jesus. Put yourself in our shoes, man. We don't have the luxury of philosophizing about wilderness values and future generations.”

“Can't you see?” Diamond's voice was low, almost pleading. I felt sorry for him. “Five years down the line the trees will be gone, kaput, pulped, so you're only delaying the inevitable by five years, but you'll be destroying a forest of untold worth. It all comes down to jobs versus the environment. Do we blithely cut down all the trees? Or do we take a stand now and give future generations a kick at the can? I understand your fears of losing your jobs, but it's a matter of face it now and save the forest, or face it later and lose everything. Your kids won't have a thing to show for it. Trust me, the government won't leave you high and dry.”

“Like hell they won't,” snarled Cameron, raising his middle finger at Diamond.

Diamond's anger sputtered to life again.

“You don't give a shit about the future, about your kids' future, our kids' future. Cut and run. Make a fucking buck and to hell with everyone else. You have no long-term vision. We have to stop you. If we don't, there'll be nothing left a generation from now and every buck you've made from this devastation will be gone, with nothing to show for it but greed. I've had enough of being diplomatic, trying to see both sides. To hell with you.”

“What do you mean?” snorted Cameron. “They'll have had five years of food and shelter and an employed
father. You're asking me to look long-term and sacrifice for the long-term benefit of others. What the hell do you expect us to do? Quit and go on pogey so we can take nice peaceful walks in the forest we decided not to log? You can't tell me that if you were in my shoes you wouldn't do the same thing, you hypocritical bastard.”

Pandemonium broke loose as loggers and environ-mentalists cheered on their man. Cameron suddenly lunged at Diamond and ripped the chain with the tooth pendant from around his neck. Shannon tried to hold Diamond back and Desrochers made a half-hearted attempt to rein in Cameron but it was no use. Diamond swung at Cameron and missed, but Cameron didn't. A loud sickening smack rang out and Diamond dropped like a stone. The camera panned the audience. I saw Leslie stoop and pick up Diamond's chain to give back to him. Donaldson and Desrochers were grinning from ear to ear. The loggers were cheering, fit to be tied. Cameron towered over Diamond and sneered. Diamond slowly rose on his hands and knees and stared at Cameron. It was deathly quiet.

The camera zoomed in and suddenly Jake Diamond's face took up the whole screen.

“You're a bunch of fucking ignorant bastards,” said Diamond as he wiped the blood from his nose. His eyes glinted. In a soft, menacing voice he said, “You'll never log that area. You've left us no alternative but to fight dirty. I'll make sure of that if it's the last thing I do.”

He turned his burning stare straight at Cameron, and I could almost feel his eyes boring into my skull from beyond the dead. It was an eerie feeling. A man once both alive and vibrant was no longer either. Abruptly Diamond turned his head away from the camera, but not before Cameron yelled back, “It might just be the last thing you do, asshole.”

It took a little while to adjust to the brilliant sunshine, and I was deep in thought as I walked back to my car. It was late afternoon and I was trying to decide where to park myself until my 8:00 p.m. appointment with Don, trying to forget that I could have been having dinner with Patrick.

As I was heading toward my car a smart little sports car turned in and Leslie jumped out.

“Any luck with your disks?” she called out.

“Not yet,” I said as she walked over to me.

“Is that why you're here? I must say, I didn't expect to see you again. Or are you here to lecture?” The innuendo was there, I could feel it, but the smile on her face seemed genuine.

“I wanted more information on the logging north of Dumoine. Patrick Whyte said he could get me the film of the info meeting. I came up to take a look at that.”

“What a zoo that was,” she said. “Don't know what good it'll do you, but it sure is entertaining, if you like controversy that is.”

“I've just taken a good look at it. There were a lot of angry people in that room that night.”

“Yeah,” said Leslie with a half-smile. “You can say that again.” She started turning away, “You going inside?”

I wasn't, of course, but I nodded, and the two of us began to walk back the way I had just come.

“I didn't notice Patrick Whyte there,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could. “I thought that was odd. Was he sick?”

“Patrick? No. He just isn't interested in the logging up there. He's a gung-ho environmentalist, but he opted out of this one. Don't know why. You'll just have to ask him.” Again, the little dig was there, not in the words themselves but in how she said them.

“I noticed you didn't take part in any of the discussions.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” she said, turning to look at me.

“Just that you seem to be in a delicate position. You're studying moose, and logging makes great moose habitat. Maybe you stood to gain something if the area was logged.”

She stopped suddenly and stared at me.

“Are you kidding?”

We reached the double doors of the building in icy silence, and Leslie hauled one open.

I hesitated, then said, “Davies tells me you and Diamond once had a relationship.”

She stared at me, cold as a glacier stream, her mouth tight and narrow. Suddenly she smiled. “Boy, you are nosey, aren't you? So's Davies. Yeah, we were lovers once. And he was a royal asshole when it came to women.”
There was a hardness to her voice, and something flashed into her eyes that made me feel uneasy.

“What do you mean?”

“He used women, although to be fair I don't think he knew he did, but he did. He'd gobble them up, chew them to pieces, and then spit them out.”

The bitterness leaked through her smile like overflowing bathwater seeping through a ceiling.

“Is that what happened to you?”

“I don't know what you're trying to get at. I don't mean to be rude, but it's really none of your business.” She scowled. “We were lovers once, okay? We fell out of love. It was no big secret. He's dead now and so what does it matter what we were to each other?”

“You got his job.”

“Sure, I got his job. I should have had it years ago, but that doesn't mean I wished him dead. Anything else?”

“Actually, yes. What would Diamond have done with film he took on his trip?”

“He'd bring the roll back here to be developed, but obviously he wouldn't have had a chance on this last trip.”

“Has anything showed up here?”

“I wouldn't know. You'll have to ask Patrick. Why are you so interested, anyway?”

“There was no film found among Diamond's belongings — not even any unexposed film. It just seems odd, that's all.”

“Sorry, can't help.”

We parted company and on impulse I stopped in at the library, found a pay phone, and put in a call to Duncan. I waited for what seemed like an age before his booming voice blasted my ear.

“What can I do for you, girl?”

I filled him in on what I'd accomplished over the two days since I had talked to him last.

“Interesting, my girl, but no evidence to warrant reopening this case.” He paused and then asked, “Have you got a theory?”

“Sort of,” I said. “He could easily have been taking sleeping pills without his girlfriend knowing. He was the sort of macho man who wouldn't want to admit to any weakness. But she also said he'd never take sardines into the bush because they're too smelly and attractive to bears.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Yeah, I do. He knew the bush well. It would have been dumb. As for the sleeping pills, I don't know of anyone who has to take a sleeping pill in the wild. He'd been out there three weeks. He must have been in great shape, working hard all day in the sun, working up an appetite and then sleeping like a baby. No need of sleeping pills. And the weather was beautiful until late on the night he died — hot and humid and sunny. Easy to go swimming, even after the sun was down, and easy to dump any soiled clothes in the water to clean out the oil, but he didn't. She's probably right, although you could argue that he got too tired and simply fell asleep before changing. But it would be like a bloody beacon sending out an invitation to the bear for supper.”

“You do see the complicated in life, don't you, Cordi? Diamond probably had someone else with him who had brought sardines and it all happened so fast that Diamond couldn't get rid of them before the bear attacked.”

In one blinding flash I saw it. Why hadn't I seen it long before this?

“Or maybe there's another reason,” I said excitedly.
“Maybe, just maybe, someone spiked his water and then planted the sardine oil on his pants.”

“What?” Duncan's voice shook down the line like a jackhammer hitting metal.

“Put it in his water flask.”

“Put what?”

“Sleeping pills.”

“Hang on there, girl. You're getting carried away. Even supposing someone did, he'd be sure to taste it,” protested Duncan.

My mind was racing, some of the pieces starting to fall into place. I thought back to his mess tent and the iodine tablets I'd seen.

“Not if he was using iodine tablets to purify his water. They'd mask the flavour of anything. What if the oil was spilled later, when he was sleeping?”