Murder at Lost Dog Lake (15 page)

A bright
flash illuminates the storm-encrusted sky and at that instant,
while you are still marveling at the wonders of light from the
heavens, a roar of thunder echoes round and round inside your head.
So loud and immediate and terrifying that you are left clutching
yourself in terror. It reverberates endlessly, the sound
diminishing note by note like an over-enthusiastic orchestra coming
reluctantly, slowly, to the finale. But, of course, the finale
never really arrives, because one clap of thunder dims gently,
melodiously into the background, only to be followed by another,
and yet another. Each competing like malicious Grecian gods as to
who can frighten the silly, fragile, feeble humans the
most.

Peal
upon peal, roll upon roll, each bolt of lightening brings each clap
of thunder cascading over your head, every one louder and more
terrifying than the last.

We had a
dog when I was a child, a great hulking German shepherd, all teeth
and attitude and loving belligerence. But the threat of a
thunderstorm, hours before it opened over us, when the weather
report predicted nothing but sunny skies and tropical temperatures,
had her hiding beneath a bed, any bed she could squeeze her bulk
under. And there she would remain, all day and all night if
necessary, until all trace of the thunder and the lightening and
the wind had vanished from her ferocious senses. Long after she was
gone, thinking about her always made me smile and made it easier to
get through the storm.

I
thought of her now, and wished I could join her under a bed until
the danger had passed.

Instead
I tugged at Craig’s arm, trying to pull him away from the crumpled
body behind the rocks. Another crash of thunder sounded directly
overhead and the accompanying burst of sharp white light
illuminated the guide’s shocked and bewildered face staring over
his shoulder and up at me. The thick, matted beard stood out
sharply against the pale white of his face, all the dark summer tan
drained from his skin, his expression unreadable.

I jerked
again and reluctantly his arm followed my pull, and he stumbled to
his feet.

“
He’s dead. That’s clear,” I shouted into Craig’s face, unsure
of how much he was taking in. I’ve seen it before, quite a few
times, what shock can do to a person in a matter of seconds.
Sometimes they shut down, right before your eyes and become almost
catatonic. But not now. Please, not now.

I was
breathing deeply myself, my stomach turning somersaults and the
bile rising into my throat. I forced it down and remembered to
breathe slowly and carefully. I had been used to seeing some pretty
horrible things when I was on the force, but this was different.
This time it was someone I knew. Someone I had talked to, someone I
had known as a living, talking, laughing, arguing, breathing body.
This was different.

I had to
get myself under control if I had any hope of controlling Craig. I
tried to look fierce and in command and stared directly into his
wide, frightened eyes. “There’s nothing we can do here. We need to
get back to the canoes, and find some shelter.”

“
But what about…” Craig’s voice came out as barely a squeak
and the words broke, but he was talking. A good sign.

“
We’ll take care of him soon. You take his pack and the
lifejackets he was carrying and go back to the others. Don’t tell
them what’s happened, yet. I don’t want a panic. Just say that
Richard had a fall, and I am with him.”

He
stared at me, his eyes empty, not a touch of emotion in the young
face. I stepped around him and gave a hard shove in the middle of
his back. “Go. Now! They’ll come looking for us in a minute and
then we’ll have five more people lost in the woods.”

The
phrase ‘lost in the woods’ got through to him. Craig remembered his
duty and stumbled off in the direction from which we had
come.

As soon
as he was out of sight, which was not more than a second given the
almost total lack of visibility offered by the curtains of rain and
the premature night, I crouched down beside the body and began a
slow careful inspection. Eyes only, no touching. I was no longer a
cop, but this was now a crime scene and it wouldn’t be much of a
stretch of the imagination to guess that I was the only one in the
vicinity with any idea at all of what to do.

And that
wasn’t much. Even if we could get a fully outfitted forensic lab
team up here in record time, the scene was already compromised
beyond belief. Unabated, the rain fell in torrents; the air itself
was liquid. In the few short moments since our arrival, the little
puddle of mud under Richard had almost doubled in size. Thick,
brown water, mixed with liberal quantities of blood, rose steadily,
reaching greedy, lapping waves towards the gaping wound in the side
of his head.

I had no
hope of keeping the body secure. I couldn’t leave it where it lay,
as I should. I slipped off my raincoat and gently wrapped as much
of the paddle in the yellow cloth as I could. Hopefully I could
preserve something of the murder weapon. For murder it almost
certainly was, and the paddle was probably all the evidence that
would ever be found.

I
studied the ground around the body, but if a herd of rampaging
elephants had passed by earlier, all trace of their passage was now
obliterated, along with anything left by the person (or persons)
unknown who did poor Richard in. Even the impressions of Craig and
my sandals were almost consumed by the eager rushing water. In
moments they would be obliterated, as if we had never
passed.

That’s
the way it’s supposed to be in the wilderness, leave nothing
behind. Instead, I wished that the last person here had left their
entire life history carved into the debris of the forest
floor.

Returning to the body, I covered the empty, staring eyes with
Richard’s hat. I folded his arms in, across his chest. I hadn’t
liked him much, in fact I’d thought he was a thoroughly stuffy,
rich old prig, but nevertheless I couldn’t leave him lying like
that, dead eyes watching the treetops.

Rising
to my feet, I hefted the paddle, gripped it tightly, and trudged
back to join the others.

The
storm continued to throw the full weight of its fury against the
rocks and the trees and the few frail humans who had dared to
venture out of their proper domain.

The
going was tough; I was soaked right through and thick, viscous mud
clutched at my sandals and put up a heroic effort to hold me fast.
I could barely see two steps in front of my face, and the steady
stream of cold rain dripping into my eyes didn’t help. I had one
moment of blind panic, thinking that I’d gone too far, that I must
have missed the path. An image flashed through my mind: myself
wandering though the forest forever, lost in the rain, clutching a
yellow raincoat wrapped murder-paddle.

But then
the trees opened up before me and the path was there. In a few
short minutes I was stumbling into the little circle on the
beach.

It would
be hard to imagine a more perfect picture of human misery that the
bunch that were huddled together under one skinny pine tree, which
offered absolutely no protection whatsoever from the elements. Even
Craig crouched silently on his haunches, head buried in his knees.
He hadn’t even bothered to try to find some shelter from the
rain.

This was
going to be tough. We were far from the nearest police station even
if the weather was clear, but in this mess… I tried not to think of
what I knew the next few days would bring.

Dianne
saw me first and leapt forward with a cry, “Richard, where is he?
Is he okay? Do you need help carrying him?” Her eyes were wild with
fright and she clutched at my arm like a woman drowning.

I
shrugged her off and carried the wrapped paddle over the rocks to a
clump of boulders. Laying my bundle on the ground, with much
effort, I managed to create a little shelter for it in a pile of
rocks. I wanted it as secure against the elements as was possible,
as well as protected from any animal that might be inquisitive
enough to come wandering at the smell of blood.

By the
time I had finished my fingers were torn and specked with blood. I
rested my forearms on my thighs for a moment to steady my nerves
and then rose to my feet. Dianne had followed me and stood silently
watching all the while. She was a smart cookie: she knew I wouldn’t
be burying a raincoat while her husband lay in the storm waiting
for help. There was no trace of the abrasive, over-confident, and
very, very, rich woman left; she was nothing but a middle-aged
woman not ready to face the news that she was now a
widow.

“
What’s happened, Leanne?” she asked calmly. “What’s in your
raincoat? You’re getting awfully wet, you know.”

“
Dianne.” I took one of her cold, clammy hands in mine. Over
her shoulder I could see the others watching us, worry etched into
their dripping and miserable faces. I led Dianne into the tiny bit
of shelter offered by a few straggly jack pines. Not much privacy
from prying eyes, but it was all I could offer in the
circumstances.

“
Richard has had an… accident,” I told her.

“
Is he all right?” she asked. How stupid we can force
ourselves to be when we want to. Of course he isn’t all right. He’s
not sitting by the side of the trail with a stubbed toe, waiting
for us to prance gaily through the forest with a picnic lunch and
high-pitched cries of sympathy.

“
No. No, he’s not. I’m very sorry to have to tell you this,
Dianne. Dear. But Richard is dead.”

I’d done
this before. Breaking the news to the next-of-kin, at the kitchen
door, at the roadside during the worst snowstorm in twenty years,
even over the phone. It was never easy. Every cop hated it,
sometimes more than anything else in the job. Maybe it’s one of the
reasons I left the force. I never really stopped to analyze it,
never consciously thought that one day it could be someone else,
all stiff and formal and dressed in blue, clutching her hat in her
hand as if her life depended on it, telling me that one of my sons
had been killed. Just one of the little things that all together
combined to make me realize that being a cop wasn’t what I wanted
in my life any more.

And now
here I was, on my summer vacation, facing yet another disbelieving
woman, trying to make her understand. Even in light of all that had
happened since we made our way to Lost Dog Lake, the irony of it
overwhelmed me.

“
Are you sure, Leanne?” Said like every survivor, as if I
would tell them news like this without being sure.

“
Yes, Dianne.” I touched her arm lightly. “I’m sure. I am
going to join the others. Do you want to come with me or would you
like to be left here alone for a while?”

She
smiled at me brightly. “Oh no. I’ll come with you. We have to do
something about getting the tents up and ourselves out of this
frightful rain, don’t you think? We certainly can’t ask any of the
others to take charge of setting up camp, now can we? Goodness
knows what sort of mess we would end up with.” And off she bustled,
stepping lightly over the rocks and through the sand.

I shook
my head in disbelief, causing a waterfall of rain to cascade out of
my hair and down over my face, and followed her.

They
were arguing by the time I got there. Rachel and Jeremy all dead
keen on hightailing it back to civilization. Dianne reminding them
that the lake wasn’t terribly hospitable at the moment. Joe wanting
to go back and get Richard. Collapsed in on himself in morose
silence, Craig continued his inspection of his knees.

Barb’s
deep English voice was a sharp contrast to her tiny, deceptively
fragile, blonde appearance. It broke through the cacophony around
us. “Oh, shut up, everyone. Leanne, what on God’s earth is going on
here? Where is Richard and when are we leaving this miserable
place?” First bit of sense I had heard from her all
week.

I wasn’t
the leader here, and I wasn’t volunteering for the job. “Craig has
something to tell us.”

The wind
appeared to be dying down a bit. Either the storm was quieting or I
was getting used to it. But the volume of rain continued, as thick
and heavy as ever. I was drenched right to the skin and well
beyond, and so cold that I was in danger of loosing contact with
some of my extremities. I rubbed my hands together in a feeble
attempt to generate a bit of warmth. All I accomplished was to move
the water around somewhat.

We all
looked at Craig. A peal of thunder sounded directly overhead,
reminding us that the weather wasn’t finished with us
yet.

Craig
lifted his eyes and looked at the circle of expectant faces
watching him. He rubbed his hands through the thick beard as if
he’d forgotten what he had to say. “Richard’s dead,” he mumbled at
last. “He was…”

“
It was an accident,” I interrupted. “A terrible accident. He
seems to have wandered off the path, probably lost in the storm.
And he must have tripped over a log, and fell unconscious face
first into a puddle.” On the long walk back, with my heavy burden,
I decided that it would be better to keep the cause of death a
secret for as long as I could. The murderer, and it could only be
one of our little circle, would know that I was lying through my
teeth. But maybe if he (or she) knows something no one else knows,
save for Craig and myself, he (or, again, she) will let something
slip. Once a cop, always a cop. Perhaps the old saying is
true.