Forever Dead (35 page)

I knelt by the side of the canoe, leaned over, and started fumbling with his hands. He was semi-conscious and moaning and his eyes were open, but they were
clouded with pain and disorientation from the blow to his head. I felt any hope vanish as I realized I would not be able to count on help from him. But then I realized the corollary to that. It was up to me to help not only myself but Patrick as well, and the thought suddenly gave me courage and dispelled the helpless feeling that had threatened to shut me down. I groped with the knot, stalling for time, eying the distance between Leslie and myself, wondering if I could get to her before she pulled the trigger. But if she wanted our deaths to look like an accident, would she really pull the trigger? I couldn't read her well enough to take the chance. Or perhaps I was just too scared and was hoping for a miracle.

“Is that what happened to Jake? An accident?” I said, frantically trying to keep her talking.

She laughed. “The bear got Diamond. You know that.”

I shook my head, still crouching by the canoe. “I don't think so. I think you killed him and made it look like an accident. You seem to like that scenario.”

She gave a derisive snort but said nothing, just stared at me, waiting, watching, like a cat watches its prey.

“You found out about the cougars and couldn't stand the thought of your old lover and rival getting the kudos.”

She snorted again. “The bastard didn't deserve it,” she growled.

“So you drugged his water, and when he was asleep you deliberately baited him and left him for the bear to finish him off.”

“You make it sound so cold-blooded,” she said. “It wasn't really like that, you know.” She paused, and then shrugged. “You see, Jake told me about the cougars the morning before he died when we bumped into each other at the portage. He didn't tell me out of friendship, but because he wanted to see my reaction. He meant to
break the news the next day,” she said bitterly. “He laughed at me, told me even if I lived to be a hundred I would never be as good a researcher as he was. Damn it. It was a fluke he found those cougars, not skill, and he knew it. But he laughed at me. He laughed at me. I hated him. I hated what he'd done to me. He had taken my love and my job. I hadn't thought he could do anything else to me, but I was wrong.”

“So, you came back.”

“Yeah. I came back. I made sure he wasn't there. He'd gone back up to his cougars. Of course, I didn't know that at the time, but he'd left with a full pack, so I knew he'd be gone for the day and would have to sleep at the loggers' campsite overnight. Macho as he was, he didn't much like canoeing after dusk. I drugged his water, and I waited until he came back. I watched him drink the water and finally, when he was asleep, I snuck into the campsite.”

She was looking at a point above my left shoulder, her eyes unfocused. I stood up, the cramps in my legs screaming for mercy. She waved the gun at me, narrowing her eyes, and I saw the hatred, hard and cold.

“I thought if I hit him on the head hard enough to keep him from waking, and then dragged him to the water and dumped him in, it wouldn't be like actually killing him. He'd drown — everyone would think it was an accident and no one would come snooping around. There'd be no chance of anyone stumbling on the cougars, and I could break the news after I'd gotten his photos developed to prove it and located the bloody beasts.” She laughed derisively and continued. “I pocketed his full film canisters, but they all turned out to be unexposed film. The only good film was the one I took from his camera. But then I lost it.” She put her left hand in her pants pocket and wiggled her fingers through a
hole. “And then you almost kyboshed it all by finding the bloody film and I had to sacrifice it.”

Not to mention almost sacrificing us
, I thought, as I remembered the flash of purple up on the cliff.

“You thought it was the larvae,” she said, “but I didn't know about the larvae until I read it in the papers.”

“So you fumigated my lab and stole my disks.”

She nodded. “I couldn't take the chance. And it was so easy. Your colleague, Jim Hilson, is a good friend of mine. We understand each other. He gave me a key to the building.”

Hilson! I felt a spasm of anger burning through my fear like sun through fog. She looked through me and an odd look of revulsion rippled through her face like a wave on a beach, mirroring mine. She shook herself and refocused on me.

“I couldn't do it. I couldn't hit him with the rock. Isn't that funny?” She laughed, the hollowness of it sounding like an echo without its source.

“He was lying there sound asleep with Paulie curled up beside him, and I just couldn't do it,” she said, separating out the last five words as if they were contaminants. “I was disgusted with myself and I went back to my canoe to lick my wounds, and that's when I saw the bear downwind of Diamond.”

She moved the gun to her left hand and said, “It was heading my way and everything else happened so quickly that my mind had nothing to do with it. It was as if I were on autopilot — my body did it all. I retrieved my pack and I took his flare gun and then opened one of the cans of sardines I'd brought along for lunch the next day if I didn't bag a fish. I dumped it on his shirt. I moved well away from him and the bear and waited in the shadows. Paulie nearly ruined things by waking up and staggering toward me, meowing, but I knocked her out with
the rock. The bear took its own sweet time and I thought it wasn't going to get to Diamond, especially when the bastard woke up and spotted me. He was pretty groggy, though, and the bear got him before he could get to me.”

“What made you so sure the bear would attack him?” I asked.

Leslie smiled. “I didn't know for sure, but I had nothing to lose once I'd discovered I couldn't do it myself. Cameron had told me there was a rogue bear over here and that they had tried to get it a bunch of times but with no luck. He had a close call with the beast while he was eating fish when the bear came out of nowhere. So I thought the percentages were in my favour. I had nothing to lose.”

When I didn't say anything she kept on going.

“Of course, I couldn't be sure and I had no plans if it failed, but it didn't, did it? But then I realized I had a big problem. I didn't want anyone snooping around the area before I could find the cougars. I had to move the body, so they'd search for the bear somewhere else. I knew Cam and his buddies would never tell the police about the rogue bear because they routinely poached fish in this area. They didn't want anyone snooping around either.”

“But what about the trace of tranquilizer they found in his bloodstream?”

Leslie narrowed her eyes.

“You don't miss much, do you?” Suddenly she smiled again and turned the question back on me, becoming professor to my student. It was an unnerving feeling. “What do you think happened?”

“The bear hung around the body too long. You tried to dart the bear so that you could move Diamond and his things quickly back to his permanent campsite, but you missed the bear and got Diamond instead.”

“I'm not as cold-hearted as you think,” said Leslie angrily. “I hate to see anything suffer, and the bear was awfully slow with Diamond. He was in too much pain. I couldn't stand it, so I climbed a nearby cliff and got out the tranquilizer gun. It seemed to take forever to get it loaded. I shot him with it to ease his pain. He was already dying. The tranquilizer wouldn't have killed him. I was just trying to ease his pain. It was daylight by then. I darted the bear afterwards with enough to keep it out of action for a while. I hid Diamond's body, gathered up his stuff, and waited until nightfall to shoot the rapids and bring him back to his permanent campsite. I couldn't risk moving him during the day. It would have worked too, if it weren't for you and your bloody meddling.”

“And the food at the campsite?”

She smiled. “Yeah, that was a stroke of genius I thought, putting the Mars bar in the tent and leaving empty sardine tins lying about. I thought you'd cottoned on to me when I accidentally told you the cops had said they'd found a Mars bar in the tent.”

I suddenly remembered back to the conversation, to the niggling feeling I had had that she had said something important.

“The cops never said it was a Mars bar,” I said in a flash of tardy insight.

“Too bad you didn't see it before, eh?” She waved the gun in my face and said, “They never clued into the lack of any bear sign, and when the loggers claimed to have killed the rogue bear it was case closed. I did take a bit of a risk there, but it worked.”

“And Don?” I asked, taking a wild stab and hoping I'd connect somewhere.

Leslie stared at me, her mouth slack, and then she sighed.

“Don. Yes, dear, kind, nerdy Don.”

“He found out what you'd done to Diamond,” I said.

“My guess is that he came to Diamond's camp late one night to persuade Diamond to forget about the problem of the fake data and saw me lugging Diamond's body out of the canoe. You could smell the sardines a mile away, and Don was no dummy. The crazy bastard tried to blackmail me, but after he talked to you he panicked and called me, said he'd have to go to the cops. I couldn't let him do that.”

“So you went to his house,” I said. She nodded.

“I offered him half the kudos and told him I'd show him the cougars and we could make it to the biology station if we left right away. But he didn't want to leave with me. He was all worried about you, for God's sake, but then I said I'd scrawl a note and leave it on the door while he got his stuff. I knew I couldn't handle both of you so that note and the malfunctioning stove were strokes of genius.”

“You took a risk. He might have read it,” I said.

Leslie laughed. “With his eyesight and my handwriting? Anyway, after that he came like a lamb to the slaughter. Pity I never knew about the fake data,” she said wistfully. “I could have blackmailed him back and he wouldn't have had to die. But I had no choice, and when we left, I turned on the faulty back burner he'd been complaining about all week, as if any of us wanted to hear about it. He kept saying he was going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning but then didn't do anything about it. Exasperating man. Anyway, I took advantage of it. I left the burner on as a shot-in-the-dark surprise for you. You were getting much too inquisitive. But it didn't work so I had to make that anonymous phone call.” She sighed again. “When I found you'd collected some insects from Diamond's body I nearly panicked. Didn't take much,
though, to trash your lab and take your disks. I couldn't risk the possibility that the larvae might identify where he died.”

“Except that the larvae I collected turned out to be ordinary blowflies endemic to both areas,” I said, hoping to take her off guard. “They're found everywhere, and it wouldn't have meant a thing to me. It was the cedar twigs in the wounds and the fact that you had fumigated my larvae that twigged me to possible foul play.”

She barely blinked her eyes as she took in what I said.

“Where are my disks?” I asked, hoping I could at least learn that, if the price for all this was going to be my death.

She waved the gun at me and smiled.

“Better get in the canoe now.”

“I don't think so,” I said, glad that my voice sounded a hell of a lot braver than I felt.

“What do you mean you don't think so?” she shouted angrily. “Are you blind? I have a gun.” She waved it to make sure I could see it.

I forced my mouth into a smile while the rest of me screamed inside at the risk I was taking. I listened in fascination and heard myself say, “You won't use that gun on me.” I prayed that I was right.

Leslie advanced menacingly.

My mouth was as dry as sawdust, and every muscle in my body screamed at me to run and never stop. But I held my ground, and Leslie came closer still.

“I'll use it, you know,” she said between clenched teeth. “Now get in the goddamned canoe.”

“It won't be like the other times,” I said, praying my gamble was right. “The bear got Diamond, a cliff killed Don, gas and a bunch of boulders nearly got me. But this time you're holding the murder weapon in your
hand and you'll have to look me in the eyes when you kill me.”

I saw her arm falter, and the gun begin to dip down as a puzzled look spread over her face. I felt a sense of elation and tensed my muscles as I judged the distance between us, but then the gun came up and she started to laugh. She raised it and pointed it right between my eyes.

“You think you can trick me?” she shouted. “What do you take me for anyway? I've killed twice, and it's true what they say: it gets easier every time. I may not have killed Diamond directly but I pushed Don over that cliff. And I stepped on your fingers. It's not much of a leap from that to pulling this trigger.”

I was unnerved by the sudden coldness and resolution in her voice, and the sudden steadiness of her gun arm as she pointed the thing at me.

“Besides” she said in a flat monotone, “I don't have to kill you, do I? Just shoot you in the leg and then the arm. I have six bullets and I'm prepared to use them all until you get into the bloody canoe.”

I almost gagged then, as I realized I had seriously underestimated her.

“It won't look like an accident, though, will it?” I said, desperately clutching at straws if they could delay my death for even a minute.

Leslie looked at me and nodded.

“You're really thinking, aren't you? You're too bloody calm by half. But think of it this way. You have more to lose than I do. If you get in the canoe you have a chance, a tiny one I admit, of surviving a trip over the falls. You have no chance at all with this gun.”

I stared into her unblinking eyes, as transfixing as a snake's, and my body went cold. The fear was building up to a crescendo — I didn't think I could hold it in
much longer, and suddenly I knew that that was my key. Use my fear. But choose the moment.