Murder at Lost Dog Lake (16 page)

Craig
stared at me. For a moment I thought he would contradict me, but he
shrugged and let it go.

The rest
of our little holiday group burst into a babble of shouting and
questions. Rachel began to scream, “I knew this would happen. I
knew it. I want to go home.”

“
Oh, shut up, you stupid bitch.” Craig leapt up to stand over
her, all the fire and passion back. His face, earlier bleached
white by shock under the dark tan, burned red with anger. His fists
were clenched and his teeth clamped. I stepped forward, fearing
that he was about to hit her. But he deflated as quickly as he had
angered and turned his back with a muffled curse.

Rachel’s
mouth closed with a snap and she cried. Soft, gentle tears mixed
with the streams of rain and black mascara dripping steadily down
her cheeks. Her nose was red and swollen, as were the lovely eyes,
not so lovely any more. Her self-absorption and out-of-place vanity
had irritated me the whole trip. I suppressed an almost
irresistible urge to find a mirror (not that I had one) and hold it
up for her inspection.

Joe
reached for her, but she pushed him away and turned her back to us.
He shrugged and looked at me.

“
I’m not going to take your word for it and leave Richard
lying in the mud back there. Who the hell do you think you are
anyway? How do you know he’s isn’t unconscious or in a coma or
something?”

“
I know.”

“
Well to hell with you, lady. I’ve known him for years. I’m
not leaving him there, I’m going back for him.” Joe started up the
path.

I ran
after him. “You’re going to get yourself lost, if you run off into
the woods alone. I’m not going to leave Richard where he is. This
storm can’t last forever and the animals will be coming out the
moment it’s over.”

That
caught his attention. He stopped and stared down the
path.

“
Ug.” Barb summed it up perfectly.
“We’re going to go about this in an orderly fashion. I… we… don’t
want any more accidents. Do we, now?” I stared at him with my best
female-cop-facing-down-the-tough-guy expression.

It
worked and Joe’s shoulders deflated as he turned back to the beach
with a shrug, pretending that it really didn’t matter to him one
way or the other. We looked at Craig, waiting for orders. They
weren’t forthcoming.

“
If Richard’s dead, that’s too bad, but I’m not standing
around here any longer.” Jeremy spoke for the first time. His
tender sunburned English skin was red and starting to peel after a
week spent on the water, under the unexpectedly strong Canadian
sun. He had been as out of place in Algonquin Provincial Park as a
pink flamingo all week. “I say we get into the canoes and head
for…” He paused, unsure of what we should head for.

“
Don’t be a fool. I’m not going out on that lake in this.
We’ll be swamped. We’ll all drown.” Rachel’s voice rose higher and
higher with each word. She waved her arms frantically at the dark,
boiling lake. “We’ll never make it. We’ll die out there. They’ll
never find our bodies.”

In spite
of my better instincts, I followed her gestures and looked out over
the lake. The sky was black as night, the air alive with falling
rain. The waters of the lake tossed whitecaps like prancing horses
and charged the shore with the force of an invading army. One
particularly large wave crashed over the rocks and erupted into a
wild dance of white foam. It contained enough water to loosen the
one canoe that had been placed in the water before the orders came
to flip them. The little craft bobbed lightly on top of the rogue
wave and then slipped easily from its moorings.

I lunged
after it, and caught the bow of the canoe in the moment a second
strong wave grabbed the bottom in an attempt to carry off its
prize. We struggled momentarily for possession of the tiny boat. My
single-minded determination won over, the wave admitted defeat, and
I hauled the canoe back up onto the shore. A loon called, the
melancholy sound loud and piercing, distorted and amplified by the
gloom and the rain.

“
Oh, shut up.” Joe shouted at Rachel. “Don’t you understand
that Richard’s dead. How stupid are you?”

“
Don’t you dare call me stupid.” Ugly with rage, she screamed
back. Specks of spittle flew everywhere. No matter, no one would
care about a few more drops of moisture. “It wasn’t my brilliant
idea to come on this crazy trip. I don’t know why I married you,
anyway.”

“
I could use some help here.” I tried to break into the
shouting match. They all ignored me.

I
dropped the front of the canoe. “If we lose a canoe some of us will
be swimming back to civilization. And it sure isn’t going to be
me.”

That did
the trick. Joe, Jeremy and Barb regained some sense of
self-survival and helped me pull the boat clear of the
water.

Rachel
continued to cry. Craig had withdrawn into himself again, and
Dianne stared out over the lake, lost in a world of her own, her
good intentions about preparing camp forgotten while everyone
bickered and argued.

Canoe
and packs secure once again, I glanced at the frightened,
half-drowned group. Such an innocent looking little bunch,
literally babes in the woods most of them. But one of them was a
murderer; it could only be one of them. And I had better not lose
sight of that simple little fact.

I turned
to Craig. “What do you want us to do, now?” I spoke loudly,
forcefully, hoping to jolt him back into reality. This really was
too much.

“
Huh?” He looked at me.

“
What do you want us to do now?” I repeated. “The canoes are
safe but everyone is getting pretty upset. We have to bring Richard
in and we have to make some sort of shelter. Wouldn’t you
agree?”

It was
like watching a TV screen come to life. The light slowly returned
to his eyes, a trace of color crept into his face, and he seemed to
grow right in his tracks. He shook his massive head, blinked
several times and then uncurled to his full height. I had hit the
right chord: to be wanted and needed, to have a job to do, that was
right up there with food and shelter as one of the basic human
requirements.

“
Right. This storm isn’t going to be over any time soon, so we
had better put up the tents. We won’t make it to a proper campsite
so we’ll stay right here, for now. We don’t have much room, but we
should be able to get the tarp up between those trees, then we can
get a bit of a fire going and maybe make some tea or hot chocolate.
We need to get something warm inside us.”

It was
nice to have him back. The very idea of hot chocolate warmed my
innards, a tiny bit anyway.

“
No way, man,” Jeremy broke in. “I’m not staying here. This is
nothing but a pile of bloody rocks. Let’s get the hell out of
here.”

“
We can’t go out on the water, not in this storm. The wind is
blowing straight into our faces for one thing. We wouldn’t make any
headway at all.”

“
Well I’m willing to try.”

“
Well, I’m not willing to let you drown yourself. Not that I
care a pig’s ass about your sorry butt. But I’m not going to see a
good canoe go down with you.” It did Craig some good having a
mutiny to contend with. Help to keep him focused.

We stood
in a little semi-circle watching. No one could possibly get any
wetter, so there wasn’t much of a hurry to get the shelter up.
Jeremy and Craig had been at each other’s throats almost the entire
trip, most of it Jeremy’s fault to be sure, but it was time for the
head butting to end.

A family
of ducks swam sedately past, basking in their enjoyment of near
perfect weather. The mother honked loudly at us, a polite warning
to the intruders to keep their distance.

“
Who wants to come with me?” Jeremy turned to Barb. “Are you
in?”

“
What kind of a fool do you think I am?” The English accent
dripped with scorn. I had never before heard that much contempt in
a few short words, and I had been married to the master of disdain
himself. No wonder the Brits had managed to conquer half the
world.

Jeremy
flushed to the roots of his hair. He deflated visibly and was about
to give up the fight when, unexpectedly, Rachel stepped in as ally.
“I’ll come with you, Jeremy.”

“
The hell you will,” Joe shouted at her. “You wouldn’t get a
yard off shore.”

She
glared at him with so much fire in her eyes that she would have
ignited the trees behind him, if they hadn’t been so wet. “Oh, fuck
off, asshole. I don’t care how important this trip is to your
stupid little company. In fact I don’t care about you. I’m leaving.
My lawyer will contact your lawyer.”

Jeremy
smiled, first at Craig, then at Barb, a nasty, smug little grin.
“Cheerio, then. I’ll be seeing you chaps someday. If you’re
lucky.”

Craig
leapt in front of him and barred the way to the water’s edge. He
was a big man, large and foreboding at the best of times, now
puffed up with anger and touches of fear and awareness of his own
impotence against the power of the elements. “You damned fool.
You’re too stupid to know you’re pointing in the wrong direction.
The main route is behind us. Remember the portage? This is a land
locked lake, and nothing but the rest of the park beyond here. If
you did keep from capsizing, and you won’t, you’ll never manage to
find your way out of the park. Even I can’t tell one island from
another in this mess. Back off, Jeremy.”

Jeremy
was smaller, much smaller. City-boy and tourist, he was completely
out of his natural habitat but he refused to back down. He
stretched onto his toes to gain some height, and his chest swelled
up like a gorilla I once saw in the zoo.

I should
have expected it, but I didn’t. I guess I have lost some of my
cop’s edge, or maybe that innate suspicion of everyone and
everything. Jeremy took a swipe at Craig’s face and the big guide
went down with a bone-jarring thud before any of us realized what
has happending. They had fought before and this time Jeremy wasn’t
going to let his prey get up. He moved in, feet swinging for
Craig’s mid-section. He managed to land a powerful blow to the ribs
that had the bigger man doubled over trying to protect his
vulnerable belly. Jeremy aimed another, deadly, kick at the head
but I grabbed him from behind with a twist to the arm that had him
scrambling to keep his footing and the blow went wild.

He was
off balance and with one quick wrench I threw him to the ground. He
slithered backwards in the mud like some kind of vile reptile,
trying to get a grip and regain his balance, but suddenly Joe was
standing over him, a paddle held high over his head. Joe was
itching to take a swipe and I was uncomfortably reminded of the
blood and brains encrusted paddle I had recently so carefully
covered in rocks.

With a
groan Craig clutched his side and stumbled to his feet. He took the
paddle from Joe’s unresisting hands and lowered it to the ground.
“Now let’s get some kind of shelter up, before we all catch our
death out here.”

An
unfortunate metaphor, considering the circumstances, but his voice
was calm and well controlled and had the desired effect on us all.
Joe held out his hand to Jeremy. The English boy hesitated for a
fraction of a second, but accepted the offering and pulled himself
out of the mud. He glared once at the circle of watchers and
stalked off into the woods. I heartily hoped the witless fellow
would get himself thoroughly lost.

Mutiny
over, Craig issued directions for setting up an impromptu camp. He
ordered us to circle the tents as close as possible, facing into a
rough inner circle. The tarp could be stretched between clusters of
old pines to make a bit of a shelter where, hopefully, he could get
the little propane stove up and running.

I had
only one argument with his plan and drew him to the side as the
others scrambled to yank tents and poles and pegs out of
packs.

“
I need one tent.”

“
Why?”

“
For Richard. We can’t leave him open to the
elements.”

“
Oh, Richard. I forgot about him.” His eyes wandered to one
side.

I
doubted that he had forgotten a single thing. Simply being stuck in
a thunderstorm wouldn’t be enough to throw an experienced guide
like Craig into the black fugue he had so recently pulled himself
out of. He must have seen lots of bad weather before. But if he
needed to put the sight of that dead body out of his mind? Whatever
gets us all through this.

“
I’m going back to him. I want to check out a few things. I’d
suggest that you clear a space well away from the rest of the camp
but not so far that we can’t see the tent. When everything is set
up, come down the trail and meet me there. And bring his sleeping
bag.”

“
Why?”

“
We have to wrap the body in something.”

Craig
nodded and turned back to his charges. “Dianne, we need you over
here. Would you help Joe and Barb to clear some of those branches
and logs out of the way? That seems to be the best spot to put the
tents, but all the bramble has to be moved first.”

The
thought of being needed dragged Dianne out of herself, just as it
had done for Craig a short while ago. Dianne loved nothing more
than to be in charge. Clambering up off her rock, she instantly
issued rapid-fire orders to everyone within earshot.