Holly rummaged under her
seat to where a pen had rolled. Her hand struck something blocky and she pulled it out, looking at it like an object from outer space. She turned to Ashley. “You had the car last. What the hell is this gizmo?”
“Um, I’ll tell you later. We’d better hustle, right?” Ashley said.
Mike and Harold hailed them where the trail started, and introductions were made. “The rest of the group is still at the tents,” Mike said. “You said to keep them together, not have people wandering all around. Everyone just wants to get the hell out of here.”
“Thanks for following directions. It makes my job easier.” She looked at him. “West Shore shouldn’t be long.” She addressed herself to Harold, a potbellied man with a balding head. His workpants were well-used and stained with paint from past jobs. “I’m going to put you in charge, Harold. Can you stay for a few hours? Someone with your security experience will be valuable.” It never hurt to pile on the praise for civilians willing to lend a hand.
“No problemo.” He pointed to a thermos. “I even brought my own coffee. It could be a long morning.”
Mike’s face looked red, and not from sunburn. He took off his Mariners cap and raked a hand through his hair. “I still can’t believe it. We were all having such a good time last night. Lindsay was … and now …” His voice weakened.
“Hold on for a sec, Mike. I want to hear what you have to tell me, but I need to get things organized here first.” More tourists might be arriving, even on an off-season Monday. Holly shook her head at the logistics, then sent Ashley to the cruiser for a roll of Chipper’s crime scene tape. Mike’s eyes widened as if the scope of the situation was hitting home. And yet in routines there was enforced order. In order not to compromise the case, every detail had to be perfect.
Mike was a wiry young guy with a bright Hawaiian shirt and board shorts. His haircut had buzzed sides but a long top gelled every which direction. “Sure, we’ll do what we can to help.”
“And as you can see, I have only one officer.” She called over to Ashley, who was ferreting around in the truck amid clunks and clanks.
“Constable, set up cones to block the roadway. If anyone tries to come through, tell them that the beach is closed. Red tide or something sinister. Make it up. Send them on their way.”
She turned back to the young man. “Mike, do all these cars belong to your group?”
He walked to the middle of the lot and considered the eight vehicles, a broad spectrum of cars, trucks, and SUVs. As he looked, he nodded as if remembering. “Uh, six are ours. The old Datsun isn’t, and neither is the Pinto with a flat tire. There was at least one campsite down from us. All the way at the end of the beach. I couldn’t tell you anything about them.”
And for all she knew, the old junkers could have been abandoned or even stolen from another place and dumped. It wouldn’t be the first time. She looked around with some dismay. It wasn’t merely a case of blocking one exit. Trails snaked their way all through the bush, some leading to record-holding trees, others to waterfalls spilling into the ocean or berry patches. Mike’s group was together, but suppose the others farther down the beach hadn’t heard what happened and took another route this morning? Maybe they were hiking west to Botanical Bay or east back to China Beach. She told Ashley to make a note of the plates and descriptions of all vehicles as well as a diagram of the lot.
Ashley managed a twisted smile. “It may get ugly. People don’t like driving all this way and having to turn around.”
“Death has stubborn inconveniences. I told you what to say. Don’t explain or get distracted by questions. You’re going to have to learn the language of the profession. That’s why I’m leaving you here for now, constable. You can handle it.” Holly’s final shred of patience was heading for a dim corner.
“Sure. No worries. We’ll be fine. Right, pal?” She looked almost flirtatious with the old man, who was wriggling a finger into his enormous hairy ear with satisfaction.
“Keep alert for the ambulance. They usually run the siren to move aside stragglers. The trail we’re taking goes right to the beach.”
Holly headed down the path, noticing that Ashley was exchanging smiles with Mike. Holly called back, “Constable, put up the tape and block access to the beach. Now, not tomorrow.” Usually she said please, but some people took politeness for weakness.
Ashley stared down the lot to a small wooden building. “Got to hit the bathroom, boss. I’ll be right back.” She left them with a nervous smile.
Mike was looking at Ashley’s disappearing back. Wasn’t he a tad young for her? Holly tapped on his shoulder, and he started.
“Lead the way, Mike. Where’s … Lindsay?” She’d been drilled many times on using discreet words for a corpse. This was a human being, someone loving and loved. Now heading for a cooling tray at the morgue, followed by an autopsy. This death raised many questions.
Mike shook himself like a wet dog, an apologetic set to his face. “Sorry, ma’am. Follow me.” He took off down the peaty path, and she had to hustle to keep up. His runners made the tortuous trip look easy. Her sturdy leather boots would never win a marathon.
“Not that fast, Mike. I don’t want a sprained ankle.” She dodged a cedar root angling for a trip.
Speaking as they walked, Mike told her that he and a half dozen friends from the UBC theatre group putting on
Cats
later this fall were camping at Sombrio Beach in a get-to-know-each-other bonding. Saturday night they set up camp and ate a vat of chili that his mom had packed. After a beach fire and a party Sunday night (he admitted that they had brought beer and the hard stuff) they all went to bed. Lindsay Cameron had started with beer, then moved to a bottle of peppermint schnapps and gone to bed at nine after vomiting. The girl sharing her tent decided to bunk with others. Everyone assumed that Lindsay was asleep. As the evening went on by the campfire, some guy way down the beach had bitched at them for noise, yelling obscenities. Everyone else turned in by midnight.
Most of the gang were up by seven with the sun to catch the noon ferry back to Vancouver. When Lindsay didn’t emerge by eight when breakfast was nearly over, someone peeked into her tent. She was gone, her sleeping bag and gear still in place as well as a full plastic barf bag. Her shoes were missing. Nobody went barefoot because of the stones. “I mean she was here, and then she was gone. We never heard a thing.”
Everyone divided up in teams and took a turn around the campground. Jungle-thick in places, the temperate rainforest was nearly impassable off the paths. Where some giants had fallen, huge rootballs groped into the air. Past the bathrooms, someone spotted a red flash in the green bush and went to look. It was Lindsay, her body hidden by a heavy growth of skunk cabbage with leaves the size of platters.
“You didn’t touch anything, then?” Holly asked, with a gulp.
“We know better than that,” Mike said, taking deep breaths to walk and talk. “But we turned her over. Two of us have CPR. It was too late.”
“I understand. That’s a natural reaction.”
How many people had any experience finding a body? It wasn’t a life skill taught in high school or college. Many of her younger colleagues had managed to go through their first year or two without confronting a lifeless form. It was a rite of passage. Far worse if the body had begun to decompose or had been disturbed by animals in Canada’s wilderness. That was an experience to give bad dreams for years.
Mike shook his head like a lumbering bear. “The girls are hysterical. Who could blame them? Her neck doesn’t look right either.”
“And there was no sign of a fall? Passing out. Hitting her head?” Chances were that the girl choked on her vomit. A stupid and unnecessary way to die. What had he said about the neck? Her heart knocked and answered back.
“Nothing to fall from. It’s pretty level.”
“People slip on the ice all the time. One blow in a key spot can do it.”
They made good time down to the beach on the wide but irregular dirt path. Logistics occupied her mind. The gurney would have to be carried, not rolled. Once in Port McNeil in the middle of a rainstorm, they’d taken a motorboat to a small island to rescue an overturned kayaker, wading into the surf up to their waists. Hypothermia had set in, and the young man could barely walk. Without the RCMP, he would have been dead, leaving his parents devastated. She’d been proud of being a part of the rescue.
Starting at China Beach, the Juan de Fuca Trail had only been opened about fifteen years ago and was still in its formative stages. There were four trailheads with parking: China, Sombrio, Parkinson, and Botanical. The last time she’d come here had been in high school, on the edge of her adulthood, before their family life headed for the abyss.
Breathing deeply and trying to make time, she had no moments to savour the scenery. Holding dominion were deer ferns and sword ferns along with the more delicate ladies ferns. The occasional bracken spread its leafy fists into fronds, begging to be turned upside down to make children’s hats. The padding of their feet added to the dull thuds of a five-toed woodpecker poking for grubs in a riddled, barkless tree. A tiny rough-skinned newt scuttled across the path. And Lindsay Cameron was dead in the midst of all of this ferocious life.
How was Ashley handling her job at the entrance? Writing her phone number for any handsome male who strolled by? Puffing up her importance by searching their cars? At least it wasn’t high summer where fifty vehicles could be in the lot. Anyone camping on the beaches in October was a hardy soul.
Accidental choking was one possibility. An undiagnosed heart condition. A stroke, even at eighteen or nineteen. And for the third choice, it was one she would never have considered before the French Beach attack. Unless something broke at the outset, this was going to be a tough case. Any initial errors were hers to make, the oversights numberless.
To her discomfort, she was beginning to break into a sweat in the heavy vest and equipment. Finally emerging through a grove of Sitka spruce with overhanging branches as dark as a cave, she and Mike made their careful way down an eroded section of earthen steps to the end of the steep and rooted trail. After serious storms, blowdowns or mudslides could block the path. One large log had been recently cut with a chainsaw, the sawdust still orange and fresh, in chunks so fine that it was obvious the chain needed sharpening. Now there was a clue of its sort, she imagined, should there be a chainsaw massacre.
With trails branching in all directions, it was simple to get lost in the rainforest on cloudy days without the sun to provide rudimentary directions. Vegetation was dense and lush, even without summer rains. Moss dipped from trees in antebellum Mississippi style. No wonder European visitors marvelled. This was no Black Forest with a carpet of pine needles and underbrush neatly trimmed, visibility half a mile. If the rainforest had a sex, it would be female and fecund. Where the salal didn’t dangle its sweet purple berries, thick groves of deadly blackberry dared the hiker to enter at his peril. The thumb-thick canes with ruthless spines shredded skin in seconds in payment for its rich sweets. Wind and waves and centuries had left weird and sinister root forms in the red, banyonlike cedar. Douglas firs stood tall and stately. Sedges with edges, swamp grasses, and leafy salal six feet high. As they progressed, peekaboo shots of the water flashed like strobe lights.
Then past a concealing corner, the mighty strait spread out beyond them like a grey tablecloth. A bright orange metal buoy marked the mouth of the trail. At high tide, travel along the beaches was impossible. The huge bright balls signified escape points.
Holly and Mike turned right along the soft path, passing wooden tent platforms. Neither the picturesque cobble nor the dense bush allowed gentle camping. Without the platforms, people might use machetes or hatchets to make the beach “pretty,” destroying the experience for others.
Holly estimated the tide at a moderate three to four feet, still loud enough to limit conversation. Driven by a west wind, foam-crested breakers were rolling in fast and furious, smashing against the beach, sucking on the pebbled shore with winking bubbles at the brim. The effect was hypnotic, especially when the fog rolled back and forth across the strait. In his legendary journal, Quimper had named the river Sombrio for its dark and shady appearance.
Soon they came to the campsite, spread out in narrow privacy along the edge of the path. At least thirty feet separated each tent on the coveted plank bases. She turned to Mike “How many in your group? How many tents?”
“Six. Three tents. Friday night two per tent. Do you want to check the tent now?”
“Lindsay comes first.” There still lodged in her heart’s wish the idea that the girl might still be alive. Deep comas masqueraded as death. But they had said that the body was cold, so that theory was a long shot.
She slowed to take in the scene. “And who was sleeping where?”
He pointed to one tent as they walked. “That’s mine and Britt’s. The next Justin and Josh and Megan. The last one is … was Lindsay’s. Megan was supposed to be with her, but …”
“And you found her…?”
“Past her tent a couple hundred yards. That’s why it took us awhile.”
She thought of the family that would be getting the news. So preoccupied had she been at getting here that she hadn’t covered all the angles. “Did someone notify her parents? From Harold’s house?”
Mike nodded. “Right after the call to you. Jesus. I didn’t know what to say. Just that there had been an accident. She was hurt. They didn’t ask more, and I didn’t add anything. They were coming right out. But from Nanaimo, who knows when they’ll get here? I hope they had someone to drive them.” As he turned away, his large hand brushed his eyes. The back of his neck was strong and tanned, one of the most attractive parts on young men before age’s thickening and creases.
“Contacting relatives is the worst part of our jobs. You never get used to it, and you never want to.” Was it better to receive a child’s body or never know her fate, imagining torture and abuse? Children of all ages disappeared, often forever. Taken from a hospital nursery or home bedroom. Last seen standing at a bus stop. Heading to Vancouver for the Olympics. Even coming home from school, less than a block away. Don’t forget victims of domestic violence, her mother might add, usually men deciding that their family should die, but failing to finish the job with themselves. Every detachment had its wall of sorrow. Flyers put up by loved ones gave her the sharpest aches. “Have you seen this young man? He disappeared from a hiking trip in ___.” Sometimes decades later a skeletal fragment told their tale. Was that what they would find of her mother? Even without flesh, DNA would tell the truth, for the bones would speak. Better that than a life of unknowing. After ten years, it had come down to that for Holly.