Forever Dead (36 page)

I let my eyes shift from Leslie's to a point just beyond her left shoulder, willing myself to imagine the arrival of help. I felt my face begin to loosen the way it does when relief floods it, and I brought my eyes back to focus on her face without ever having turned my head. She was looking at me, first with curiosity and then with growing alarm. We held each other's eyes until once more I let mine flit over her shoulder, head as still as death, and then quickly looked back at her. It was too much for her, and as she turned to see what I had seen I jumped her and let all my pent-up fear out in one shuddering, horrifying scream.

I grabbed her gun arm and tried to wrench it out of her hand. I gasped in alarm as it stretched like pulled taffy while we both struggled for possession. Leslie suddenly let go, and I staggered back as the gun snapped back to shape with a resounding thud. Startled, I hesitated, staring at the useless rubber replica in my hand, and Leslie lunged. I jerked left, but not far enough, and Leslie caught at my arm as her momentum shot her forward toward the swirling water of the river beyond. She spun me around, and I lost my balance and crashed down on the rock, slipping, my legs hitting the cold water as I scrabbled to find a purchase for my hands. A second later I heard the splash as Leslie hit the water. I felt her hands clamp down on my legs like a vise, and I started to slide back as Leslie pulled me in.

I grappled for a hold on the slippery rocks, feeling our combined weight and the strength of the current dragging us in. I could feel my mashed-up fingers slipping over the surface, my face scraping against the cold, hard rock as I tried to stop the slide into the water. And then my fingers caught hold of a crack, and I held on as
Leslie tried desperately to climb up my legs and out of the current. I could feel her hands inching their way up slowly and surely as her body rasped against mine. I still had a tenuous grip on the rock and tried to wedge my fingers down to hang on. I couldn't kick out without a good grip, or we'd both go. Frantically, I felt for a better handhold, my fingers groping over the rock. And there it was, a crack big enough to take my whole hand and wedge it securely.

I gripped hard then, and kicked out viciously with my legs. Leslie was like a leech, and I couldn't dislodge her. I waited, and the second I felt her grip loosen as she crawled further up my leg I gave a massive kick, arched my back, and felt Leslie's other hand loosen and slide down my legs, scrabbling madly, until suddenly she was gone.

It took everything I had left to haul myself out of the water and onto the rocks. I lay there gasping for breath and looked at the river. There was no sign of Leslie downriver in the white foaming mess, and I shuddered. I looked back at the canoe held back from the rapids only by the bowline still tied to a tree, its stern line under water and caught by the current. It was being buffeted by the fast moving water, and with Patrick's dead weight in it, it was in danger of swamping. Patrick!

I could hear him groaning even above the roar of the rapids. I needed to get hold of the stern line and pull the canoe into shore. I gripped the side of the canoe and hauled it in as I inched my way down to the stern. Finally, I grabbed the line and started to pull it in, but it wouldn't come. I cursed when I realized it was caught in the rocks. I braced myself, leaned back, and pulled with all the strength I had left … then reeled back in shock.

Leslie's head lunged up through the surface of the water gasping and spluttering, her hands in a death grip on the line, her wild, crazed eyes boring into me. My
body reacted before my mind could think, and I dropped the rope burning my hands and staggered back onto the rocks. I watched, mesmerized, as Leslie struggled to keep her head above water and slowly began pulling herself forward again, her head forced under again and again by the power of the water. I couldn't take my eyes off the wild, hair-streaked face, and with sick fascination watched as she moved nearer. I was gripped by the inertia of fear and revulsion, transfixed by Leslie's image as surely as a mouse is transfixed by the snake moving in for the kill.

Inch by laborious inch, she pulled herself closer to safety, her bulging eyes boring straight ahead, staring at something, never wavering, with such a raw intensity that I glanced back and gasped. Patrick was draped over the stern seat, blood from his bandaged wound seeping through and trickling down his face. Slowly, painfully, he unclipped the stern line from its ring and let it go.

Nearly a week had passed since Patrick and I had almost died on the river, and I was on my porch lazing in the hammock, nervously thinking about my dinner party just two hours away. Everything was ready except my mind, which wouldn't stop telling me in great detail everything that might go wrong. And I didn't want anything to go wrong. I'd invited Ryan, Martha, Duncan … and Patrick. Especially Patrick. The man I had pegged as a murderer; the man who had come to the campsite in search of me after hearing from Roberta that I was alone up there; the man who had discovered my pack covered in oil and had looked up to see the bear coming out of the woods behind me; the man who had tried to save me by firing a flare gun and then, when that failed, who had tried to lead the bear away from me, and nearly died for the effort.

As I'd watched him unclip the line from its ring and let it slide over the stern and into the fast water, before slumping back exhausted into the canoe, I had felt betrayed by my own thoughts and angry and ashamed that I could have so misjudged him. I had moved then, as fast as my battered body would allow, to get help, and Patrick and I had been airlifted by float plane out to a hospital in Dumoine. I thought back to the day in the hospital when I'd visited him as he recovered from a severe head injury. Now, tonight, would be his first visit to my home, and I was a bundle of nerves jangling in the late afternoon breeze.

“I think I know who you are, Cordi O'Callaghan.”

The sudden softness of his voice drowned out the crickets with its sheer intensity of meaning. He must have walked in from the barn because I hadn't heard a car, and my heart lurched to stalling point. As I struggled to sit up in the hammock, Patrick came up the porch stairs two at a time. He sat beside me then, his body pressing hard against my own, his hand reaching for mine. The livid scar on his forehead where the bear had caught him was healing, and I wanted to touch it, but I didn't. I thought the heat inside me might burn him.

“You're two hours early,” I said instead, trying to hide my nerves. He said nothing, just looked at me with that melting smile of his. He stroked my hand and his fingers moved lightly over my arm, found their way under my blouse, like butterflies, barely touching my skin, and yet I was screaming at their touch.

“Look at the cows out there,” I croaked. “See how the sun makes them look red?”

“I don't want to look at the cows,” he said, his eyes caressing mine. His voice was so soft it was like a blanket enveloping me. My body knew what it wanted, but my stupid mind just wouldn't let me go.

“I think Mac's going to be late milking the cows. They shouldn't still be there at this hour,” I said, feeling like an idiot — wanting to be otherwise.

“Shut up and kiss me, Cordi O'Callaghan.”

He pulled me to him then. I felt his lips hard against mine in an explosion of pent-up emotion that consumed both body and soul. I could still hear the cows mooing in the field and the crickets chirruping, but the sun froze in its tracks within the medley of our wildly beating hearts. We sank into each other and I allowed myself to finally believe what I had seen in his eyes.

We lay in the hammock, afterwards, peacefully waiting for the rest of my guests to arrive and listening to the sounds of night falling. No need for words. We'd just spoken them with our souls.

“Well, well, well, what have we here?”

From deep inside Patrick's arms, I looked up to see Duncan smiling down on us. I realized we must have fallen asleep, and, embarrassed, I struggled out of Patrick's embrace and the hammock's cocoon to greet Duncan, Martha, and Ryan. Martha raised her eyebrows in a knowing way, and Ryan eyeballed me and Patrick the way only a brother can. I introduced them to Patrick, who, totally unfazed, graciously rose to greet them as if he'd known them all his life.

I left them to it and went to get drinks. When I returned they had all found seats, and as I handed out the drinks Duncan said, “What did I tell you my dear girl? You'll make a marvelous forensic consultant, having single-handedly solved a murder no one knew about!”

Duncan's large form was sprawled on one of my porch chairs nicely snugged up beside Martha's. Patrick was sitting on the railing and Ryan was in the hammock
sipping wine and watching the sun bathing the escarpment a deep golden yellow.

Ryan smiled and said, “So, you've decided, Cordi?”

I looked at Duncan, and then at Ryan and Martha, who winked at me. It certainly looked as though they had all decided long before I had. I went and sat on the rail beside Patrick.

“Yes,” I said. “I guess I have. I figure it won't be too onerous, but we'll see.” I still had misgivings. “And it'll be interesting.”

“Not to mention that it's a great hook for your taxonomy course,” added Martha with a laugh. She turned to Duncan, who raised his eyebrows in alarm. “Do you realize we had to put ten students on a waiting list in case any of the forty registered students dropped out? They all wanted to be part of a team solving a murder — the course description sounded like a detective novel. Of course the publicity in the paper about the murder, and the halting of the logging, and the cougars, and Cordi's role in it undoubtedly helped, but the outline is great stuff. You should read it, Duncan. Full of blood and gore and mystery.”

Duncan looked a little nonplussed, and I shot a nasty look at Martha, who in turn raised her eyebrows and pointedly said nothing. All these raised eyebrows were making me dizzy.

“We're not talking human murders here,” I hastily reassured Duncan, who had taken out his handkerchief and was now wiping his brow. I could just imagine him envisioning forty undergrads storming his lab for evidence or set loose on the streets asking questions. It was an alarming thought, even to me, and I quickly set things straight.

“I'm setting up my taxonomic assignments — or at least some of them — as homicides. We're talking about
road kills — you know, dead coons and porcupines, even dead pigs and birds — that sort of thing.” The relieved look on Duncan's face was comical.

“You mean someone's out there murdering pigs?”

“No, of course not. We're just going to set it up as though these road kills have been murdered. Each group will be assigned a ‘murder' and Martha and I will manipulate the corpses so that the students will be told where to find the murder victim. They will then have to collect and raise the larvae to adulthood and identify them. We also want them to determine if the body has been moved from where they find it and how long it's been dead. So they'll be collecting flora as well as any biological entity that might help them solve the murder.”

“Some of them actually are murdered, you know,” piped up Martha. Her face turned dark and ominous as she continued in a low conspiratorial tone. “I've seen drivers purposely swerve to hit a turtle or a coon. It's revolting.”

We all politely thought about the murdered animals for some seconds, and then I broke the silence and addressed Duncan.

“You won't have to worry, Duncan. The students will not be running all over campus. I've got permission to use some abandoned land outside the city. The students will treat it like a murder mystery. That's all. And it's just one part of the course. Once I get them into the course, I can teach them the basics of taxonomy and hopefully hook some of them for life.”

Duncan broke out his best smile.

“I have to hand it to you, girl. It's a brilliant idea but, please, please, I don't want any of those undergrads osmosing over into real murder territory if and when I have to call you in on a case. I'm not sure I could handle the hordes.”

I laughed and said, “I
know
I couldn't. Not all at once, anyway.”

Before Duncan could respond Martha poked him playfully in the ribs and said, “Don't you dare call on her for at least three months. Now that she's got her disks back, she's received conditional approval of her grant based on seeing final research results of her work to date in three months, and revisions for her article for
Animal Behaviour
will be handed in as soon as she can do them, so she'll be very busy.”

She winked at me and I laughed, remembering how ecstatic I had been when the cops, after Leslie's body had been fished out of the river, had searched her apartment and found my disks as well as photographs of the cougars. I guessed I would never know why Leslie hadn't thrown the disks away — perhaps the same sort of reluctance that had made her choose to carry a rubber imitation gun. Or the hope that something on the disks would help her own career. Whatever it was, I was grateful.

“Not to mention the fact that she's now got Hilson's animal behaviour course to teach, too,” said Martha as she rubbed her hands in glee. “And you should have seen Jim Hilson's face when Cordi broke the news about Leslie and torpedoed his career. Of course, the university did the actual firing because of his role in the fumigation of Cordi's lab. But Cordi got to break it to him big time!”

Uncharacteristically Martha stopped talking and I realized they were all looking at me.

“What can I say?” I said. “I won. He lost.” Keep it short and sweet. But I couldn't do anything from preventing it from running through my head.

It was indelibly imprinted on my brain. Jim Hilson had waltzed into my lab, given my rear a pat, and said, “It's farewell time.”

I pushed him away, but he kept crowding me so I pushed as hard as I could and he grabbed my arm with lightning speed. I twisted away from him and said, “I'm sure you don't want harassment added to your charge of accessory to theft and murder.” He dropped my arm as if I'd bitten it. “Do you?”