Forever Dead (18 page)

“I understand you two didn't see eye to eye over this logging business.”

Patrick looked up quickly and fixed me with a frown that made his eyebrows merge into one long bushy slash. I much preferred the smile.

“We had our differences. He was a real firebrand radical when it came to the logging issue. He had to win at all costs. I thought he was an asshole and not harmless. He was a dangerous man. Intelligent but with a real temper, and he had a real problem with women. He did try to treat them as equals, but they shone out of his eyes as sex symbols — with no brains. If you've ever met his wife you'll get my drift, although I must say his current girlfriend isn't so bad. Guess he's getting better at picking them.”

“He's got a girlfriend? Does his wife know?”

“Does his wife know? Are you kidding? Everybody knew. The wife was filing for divorce. He'd been through half the department here. The man chased anything in a skirt. He wasn't a cruel man — just horny.”

I thought about Lianna's tear-streaked face. Perhaps not such a grief-stricken widow as she had seemed, pretending to rein in emotions that weren't there. Good actor though. I had to wonder why. To get the black book? Why was it so important?

“Who's his girlfriend?”

“You mean his current one?”

“Yes.” God, how many had he had, I thought, suddenly feeling sorry for Lianna in spite of myself.

“Shannon. Healthy, shy little thing, not like his usual mannequins. She was in here the other day picking up some stuff from his office. Pretty broken up about it, I'll say that for her. Not like the wife. They had a hell of a fight here. Met in the hall outside his office.”

“What happened?”

“They lost it. What a ruckus. They were screeching so loudly and the swear words were colouring the air blue. Something about Diamond's property and will, but why Shannon should be hoping to get it is beyond me. Wife's entitled to everything unless he left a will saying otherwise. Anyway, it was pretty ugly, and Davies nearly burst a gut trying to get them out before the students heard any more. Quite comical, actually. He looked just like a sheepdog trying to herd his sheep.”

“Had she and Diamond been together long?”

“Year, year and a half, I'd say. No more, anyway. I must say, he seemed quite happy with her. She'd be able to tell you more about Diamond than any of us if you're willing to be patient. She's in Ottawa. Lives on McLeod, I think. Diamond commuted on weekends. I can give you her number if you like.”

I nodded. Patrick rummaged through a desk, then wrote down the number on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. I noticed his fingers were long and
slender and he wore a single ring on his right hand, a grey star sapphire that showed dull in the false light of his office.

“You should talk to Leslie, too. Do you know her?” he asked as I took the paper from him. He didn't let his half go right away, and I wasn't sure what to do. I shook my head and looked up at him, feeling like a fool as I hung onto my half of the little piece of paper.

He smiled and suddenly let go. I squirreled the piece of paper away and said, “I was just talking to her.”

“Good,” he said. “She can tell you a lot, I'm sure.” He laughed and shook his head. “They loved to hate each other, those two. He got tenure and she didn't. Apparently they were equally qualified, but there was only one tenured position open. They say she was very bitter and vindictive. Claims it was sexist. Who knows? Happened before I was here. She's got his job now and tenure will follow I'm sure. Damned happy about it, I should say. Poor taste though. Wouldn't put it past her to have been smiling at the funeral.”

I picked up a small tooth on top of the desk, twirled it in my hands. It looked like the tooth of a carnivore.

“What's this?”

“That's a Canada lynx tooth. Diamond collected a lot of samples whenever he could, and he had an extensive tooth collection that he prized. All the cats from all over the world: lion, cougar, jaguar, cheetah … He nearly knocked the lights out of one of the loggers at a meeting when he broke the chain around Diamond's neck and flung it across the room. It was one of his precious teeth, and nobody lays a finger on his precious teeth without permission. There's a film of that meeting. You should take a look at it if you want to see what Diamond was like. Quite entertaining.”

“What meeting was that?”

“An information meeting about the logging up near Dumoine. It got quite emotional.”

“How can I get a copy of that film?”

“I'll set up a showing for you at the media centre here if you want.”

“I'd like that. It could be useful,” I said. I put the tooth back on the desk. “Did Diamond usually take photos when he went out on his trips?”

“Yes. He always had his camera with him just in case.”

“What about this last trip? Anything turned up?”

He looked at me curiously, and I noticed that his blue eyes were flecked with black motes that made them appear fathomless.

“Nothing's turned up here that I know of, but then the police are probably sitting on it still.”

“They didn't find any film.”

He frowned but said nothing.

“Did you ever go on any of his field trips?”

“Yes. He hated company, but he usually needed it when he was tranquilizing the cats to put a radio collar on, and that's when I'd get my samples — you know, you're a zoologist — vials of ticks and stuff. Anyway, I always shot the dart — he hated to do that.”

“Isn't that out of character? I would have thought he would be the sort of macho man who would hunt.”

“No, he hated weapons of any kind. He blinded a kid in one eye with a BB gun when he was eight. Apparently they were in the woods alone and the kid screamed and there was blood everywhere and he kind of lost it. It made him sick. As I said he was a sensitive man, at least when it came to anything inherently violent. I can't help but like that in the man. But he was too damn stubborn. Thought he was right all the time. Trouble was he was bright enough that he usually was.
Anyway, I would shoot the darts and then I'd help with the radio tracking equipment.”

“How easy would it be to accidentally shoot yourself with a tranquilizer gun?” Patrick looked at me and turned his head to one side. God, he was a nice-looking man. I mentally kicked my thoughts to scatter them out of my mind. They were too damn distracting. The effect this perfect stranger was having on me was unnerving.

“What kind of question's that?” He shuffled some papers uneasily and cleared his throat. “Not easy, but I suppose it could happen. It's a gun really, and the ammo is a dart that shoots out. The impact of the dart in the animal's hide releases the tranquilizer. Still, you'd have to be pretty dumb or fantastically careless or accident-prone to do that unintentionally.”

When I got to work first thing the next morning I geared myself up and phoned Shannon Johnson, Diamond's girlfriend, but all I got was a chirpy voice saying she and Diamond were out and to leave a message. Jeez, Diamond had been dead for at least three weeks by my reckoning and she hadn't changed the message? Creepy. I left my name and number and explained the reason for my call and suggested a meeting after work.

I called a list of entomologists Martha had come up with and shamelessly pumped them for information about their courses: what they had found worked and what didn't. It was discouraging. Most of them had enrollment way down and grant money in the air, except the ones working for agriculture, and they had gobs of money.

I spent the rest of my day doing research in the library and missed the call from Shannon, but Martha
confirmed that the date was on — or at least that's what she thought she'd gleaned from the garbled conversation.

I left work early, shopped along Elgin Street, and bought a good sturdy rope hammock that I'd been dying to get. The kind with the wide wooden spreaders. Then I walked down Elgin to McLeod and Shannon's apartment. It was an old apartment building on the corner across from the Victoria Museum — a five-storey red brick affair with a wide central staircase going up to the second floor. I walked up the flight of stairs and found apartment 2. There was a little card identifying the occupants as Diamond and Johnson.

I knocked on the door and waited a long time before it opened and a tall blond-haired woman in a fashionable two-piece suit stared out at me. I wondered why Patrick had called her small until I remembered how tall he was. Anyone under six feet must have seemed small to him. Shannon stood a good three inches taller than I did. Her green eyes were puffy and red and her tiny features were the colour of sorrow — ash grey. There was a slight resemblance to Lianna, but this woman had more warmth. She kept wringing her fingers and looking behind her. I introduced myself, but Shannon ignored my hand and didn't invite me in. She just stood there and stared at me and then said in a curiously emotionless voice, “I don't understand why you think I can help you, why you think a bunch of stolen disks have anything to do with Jake.”

Her voice was soggy, her green eyes flat and dull, as she waited for some cue from me.

“I don't know that it does, but Jake's the only lead I have to go on.”

Shannon stood in the doorway fiddling nervously with the doorknob until I had the strongest desire to grab her hand and pull it away from the damn knob.

I repeated what I had said on the phone, all about my disks and Diamond. When I finished there was an uncomfortable silence as Shannon struggled with some inner battle and gripped the doorknob like a lifeline. She kept shooting looks at me and as quickly looked away, making up her mind a dozen times and changing it until I finally said, “Look, maybe now isn't the best time.”

At that Shannon made up her mind.

“No, no I think it's okay. I suppose you'd better come in.” She pulled open the door and let me in, then quickly closed and bolted the door behind her.

I followed her down a short, indigo blue hallway into a very large room. It had lovely high ceilings and large windows overlooking the museum, and the windowsills were wide enough to sit on, except that they were full of plants. The windows were open and a gentle breeze was blowing the pale peach curtains inward. There were boxes of books, some computer disks and file folders in the centre of the room, and papers spread over every surface. The back of a red velvet sofa had been slashed and the stuffing was all over the floor. Three pictures leaned against the wall, one of a lynx and two of Diamond and Shannon, with the glass shattered and the photos ripped.

“Oh, it's kind of a mess,” she said, which I thought was rather an understatement. “Someone broke in and trashed the place sometime this morning. The police only just left.”

It was quite a mess. Diamond certainly seemed to have left a lot of paperwork behind him that interested someone. First his office ransacked and now his home. I wondered if he and his wife still kept a house together and if it had been searched too.

“I came home for lunch and found stuff flung everywhere. It's horrible. It's taken all afternoon to clean it up
and figure out what's missing. Just a bunch of vandals the police say. Why do people do these things?” I didn't like the sound of her voice, a tight, bare-knuckled type of voice, on the verge of control and the abyss beyond.

“Look, maybe I'd better come back another day. It's not a good time for you.”

She answered so quickly and with such vehemence that it made me start because it seemed so out of character. “It's the perfect time. You can help me clean up while we talk.” She looked at me and softened her voice. “I sure could use the help.” She handed me a plastic bag and indicated a pile of papers in the corner. I picked my way through the mess and began stuffing papers into the bag.

“What did they steal?” I asked.

“Nothing important as far as I can see,” she said. “All our valuable stuff is here: the stereo, VCR, computer …”

I had sidled my way over to the computer, and the distinctive smell, though weak, made my skin crawl. The computer was covered with the same stuff that had wiped my own computer clean.

I looked around and saw her staring at me. “You didn't keep any important records on this computer, did you?”

“We used to, but the computer had total system failure once and Jake never trusted it again. He used it only for small stuff anyway. He'd bring home his current work on those disks and feed them in. He never left any of his work on the computer, just games and things like that.”

“Any of your work?”

“Me? No. I don't know anything about computers. I like a pen and paper better. I never used it.” I wondered if she knew what the formaldehyde had done to the computer — surely she could smell it — but I didn't have the heart to bring it up. She'd find out soon enough, if it was important. “Do you know what was he
working on? His grad student said he was excited about something. Any idea what it was?”

“No.” She hesitated. “But Patrick's right. He was kind of excited about something, but when I asked, all he would say was that it was important and he wanted to surprise me.”

I idly started looking at the labels on the disks — all games of one kind or another, no data, no personal stuff.

“Was anything stolen, anything at all?”

“Yes. About two months before Jake died he brought back a little box filled with some mammal teeth and fur, said it had something to do with his lynx studies. You know about his lynx studies?” I nodded. “He sometimes brought stuff like that home, not often but sometimes, and only the really good specimens. He kept them in a box in his desk over there. Most of what he collected he gave to Patrick to catalogue, but sometimes, if a tooth was particularly good, he'd bring it back for himself.”

Her hand went to her neck and I saw she was wearing a necklace with a single tooth, embedded in silver, dangling from a silver chain.