by P W Ross
Jack smiled, knowing that if he said a month, it meant he would be lucky to have it before the season ended. “Ralph, don't worry about it, you're an artiste. Just make it right.”
“Which one?”
“Over there. Outer hull is done and I oiled it this morning. When it's soaked in we'll get the canvass on her and I can get to work on the seats, but she'll still need three coats of marine enamel and then there's the drying time. That, plus the fact I’ve got all these others to finish before ice-in.”
“Take your time Ralph. I’ve got lots of it. Just keep poking away when you can and try to get it to me in my own lifetime. Goddamn it, I love the smell of this place; the cedar, the oil, and the sawdust. Sometimes I think it's the only reason I come in here.”
“Jack, that's the glue you smell. Next thing I know you’ll be off sniffing with the kids. Look, I know you want that canoe this season and I promise do my best, just don't tell me it's a gift for someone's birthday.”
“But it is!”
“Yeah, whose?”
“Mine.”
“I’ll put a bow around it.”
“Ralph, when you asked me for a little business advice, what did I tell you?”
“I know, I know. Never get the sale confused with the delivery.”
“It's good advice, Ralph. Just not supposed to apply to me.”
“Well... guess I try not to discriminate.”
“Bye Ralph, see you tomorrow night at the bar. I gotta go. I’ve got some business to finish with Eugene at the station.”
“I bet you do.”
“You too?”
“Words gets around Jack.”
“No shit... what did you hear?”
“Just that you and Bob fished a couple out of the drink this morning.”
“Yeah, what else?”
“Seems they didn’t fall out of a canoe.”
“That's for sure.”
As he walked away, Ralph called out to him. “Jack, the colour? Red or green?”
He looked back over his shoulder. “Green Ralph... green.”
The gold lettering on the glazed half of the door read, ‘Inspector Rummell'. Jack was finishing his written statement. He felt he was doing a homework assignment and come to think of it, this place smelt like an old schoolroom. An old slate chalkboard would not be out of place. Duff had roused from his slumber in the boat, and now lounged at Jack's feet, gnawing on a sizeable beef leg bone purloined from the Co-op.
Signing the completed report, Jack circled into the next office, where Jill was uneasily slouched in a wooden hoop chair and Eugene reclined behind the desk with his feet up beside the ‘Out’ basket. There was a one-quarter empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the desk and they were drinking from paper cups. Jack tossed the report on the desk. Eugene ignored it.
“Little early, isn't it Eugene?”
“Take a load off, we've punched the clock for today.”
Jill was visibly uncomfortable drinking with the boss, on or off duty, and squirmed in her chair.
“Not setting a bad example for Jill are we, Eugene?”
“Not that it's any of your damned business, but matter of fact I am. I'm hoping that sooner than later, she sees the folly of her ways and gets out of this job before she gets hooked.”
“You should transfer to recruiting.”
Jack waived off a drink and, turning a wooden chair around backwards, sat down, put his left elbow on its back and held his chin in his hand.
“How long you 'bin on the force Eugene?”
“Goin' on thirty years now.”
“Ever seen anything like this?”
“You're kidding, right?”
“’Bout what?”
“Jesus kid, give your head a shake... no one... nowhere... has ever seen anything like this.”
“So, what’re you gonna do?”
“Sit here and have another drink.” Jack eyed him with disdain. “What? You got some suggestions?”
“You're the cop, Eugene, what the hell am I supposed to know about this shit? There's my statement.” He pointed to the desktop. “It’s just gruesome, cruel and random violence.”
“Gruesome yes, cruel yes, random no.”
“Says who?”
“Me... Random is not the word for it Jack. Absolutely... categorically... not even close. Seems that way to you because you haven't lived with this kind of crap for thirty years. Murder is never random. There's always a reason. Maybe not a motive, but always a reason and there's a difference.”
“You’ve got nothing to go on here Eugene. There was nothing on the bodies; no jewellery, no tattoos, no ID, and no sign of any real trauma... nada!”
“Easy Jack, you’ve been watching too many TV shows where the killer or “perp”, as the TV goofs likes to say, is apprehended in the allotted one hour, minus time out for commercials. You think Brautigan is going to bring me some CSI folks and they’ll spray the bodies with some magic fairy dust? Fuck that. Trust me, something or someone will show up. Just a matter of time. Those two aren't just murder victims, they're missing persons and eventually someone will report them as such. The problem is, when? The longer it takes, the tougher this is gonna be to solve and it could take a whole lot longer than normal.”
Eugene was half in the bag but on a roll and Jack just let him ramble while Jill looked on like the pupil at the masters’ feet.
“If we're lucky, they were staying at a lodge and we’ll hear about it tomorrow. If they were camping it could be as long as a couple of weeks before they're missed. As for cottagers, they stay out of town for weeks at a time.”
Eugene inhaled and exhaled deeply, finished his paper cup and poured himself another, tapping his fingers on the desk, thinking to himself, a forefinger to the side of his nose.
“If they canoed and portaged in from another lake, might have been just passing through and you'd never even know they were on the water. The houseboats are on a weekly schedule and don't usually come in for another three days. Hell, come to think of it we don't even know if their fingerprints are going to be any good. Probably not. That sad couple could be from anywhere. For all we know, they were screaming in German when they went down.”
“One thing is certain, someone had to take them out there to that location and deep six them. If Brautigan is right and they were alive when they went in then, I'll bet my badge they weren’t transported here but taken right off the lake. Need some luck on this one. Right now, all we can do is wait and see what comes off the lake, what the autopsy says, and hope for a missing persons report. Jill, you better make sure the launch is topped up in the morning. We’ll be spending most of the day out on the water.”
“Doing what?”
“we'll run the main channel, scan the shoreline with binocs, stop a few boats, visit a few camp sites, ask a few questions and just hope we find something. It's a long shot but we’ve got to start somewhere and most of all we have to let the force and the townsfolk know that we're active. When this sinks in they’ll be plenty scared.”
Understatement of the century? Jack wondered.
Chapter Seven
Jack also thought more about the perp’s reason and motive.
“Well, I'm not going to give you any cop movie, psycho profile bullshit, 'cause I'm not that smart. I just keep it simple. Reasons, I put down to things like sudden violent emotion, anger and rage around a ‘domestic’ gone out of control, a drug deal gone sour, a drunken fight over a man or a woman. Motive is reason with purpose. Reasons are simple. Motive is complex... sinister. This murder absolutely screams motive, and it's saying something else as well. Don't ask me what. I don't know 'cause I haven't got my arms around this yet but it's going to turn out a hell of a lot darker than you think it already is. How's that? Hard to imagine, isn't it?”
“If you're going to kill two people,” probed Jack, “why would you go to the trouble of somehow getting them into a cage, and then take them to the middle of a lake and drown them?”
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nbsp; “That's what I'm trying to tell you, son. Maybe he, or she, or they, want to send a message, make a statement.”
“Some message. But even if that's the case, how could the killer be sure the bodies were going to be found? That was just shit-ass bad luck that Bob and I fished them out.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Could be that once they bloated up, they might have brought that cage to the top with them. It couldn't weight much by itself. Maybe we could have eventually figured out close to where they were, dragged the bottom and sent down divers. Who knows? We're way ahead of ourselves right now.”
He paused for breath, staring at Jack.
“Tell you one thing I do know for sure right now, Jack.”
“And what's that Eugene?”
“One way or another, this is going to be one hell of a retirement case. I'll be dining off this one for years.”
Rummell raised his cup aloft in a toast.
Hearing a muffled snort, all turned to see Duff in the doorway with the bone in his mouth. He'd had enough for one day. Time to go.
He was half way out the door when Eugene called after him. “Jack, as they say in the movies, 'don't leave town', I'm gonna need you.”
Whatever that meant.
Chapter Eight
Passing the provincial park, toward the cabin, Jack savoured the scent of cooking fires as campers prepared their evening meal. Two small children sat high on a bald rock at the waters’ edge, dangling their lines in the water twenty feet below with hopes of a bass or an unsuspecting walleye. Like a hood ornament, Duff stood with paws on the gunwale, nose twitching into the wind and ears swept back.
Landing at dusk, dim solar path lights spaced at twenty feet had just come on, leading the way from the boathouse, past the workshop and up to the cabin. Beside the workshop Jack halted as Duff spun abruptly and returned to the boathouse. Across the bay, a low rattling sound behind caused him to turn slowly and spy a Belted Kingfisher on the peak of the workshop roof.
It peered intently into the shallow waters where, at this time of year, there were small fish of many species in abundance. Slightly larger than a robin, its head was accentuated by the bushy crest and a large pointed bill. It sported a grey breast band over its white belly. This one, with her additional rusty amber breast band, was a female searching for one last evening morsel for a nearby nest of youngsters. It would not take long.
Rattling as she went, she arched out over the bay, flying with uneven wing beats, as if changing gears. Circling, she returned and thirty yards out pulled up into a hover. A second later it was over as she tucked her wings into a delta and plummeted to pluck a minnow from four inches of water and retreat to the forest. Observing this scene many times never diminished the amount of simple pleasure it provided Jack.
Duff had emerged from the boathouse and was coming along the path with the temporarily forgotten bone. He trotted smugly past Jack, leading the way. Unwilling to cook, Jack opened the fridge, held on to the door with one hand and leaned in. Slim pickings. He meant to pick up groceries at the Co-op, but the contents of the meat locker had, at the time, dampened any thoughts of food. After uncorking a bottle of Shiraz, he made himself a sandwich. The spicy red invigorated him has he prepared what his father would have called a 'Dagwood'. He had no idea of the origin of the name. Smoked ham, salami, Swiss, red onion, iceberg lettuce, tomato and mayo on an oversized Kaiser with a dash of salt and pepper. Might as well have had the poutine in town, he mused. Not to worry, Jack knew the red wine would mitigate any ill effects. Pressing it down by necessity with two hands, he sliced it in half. Slipping into a red lumberjack coat he glanced at Duff.
“Dog, you coming?”
Duff took only a few seconds to decide on taking a pass. He opted instead for the ottoman. He didn’t want to hurt Jack's feelings but it had been a long day.
“Yeah, I understand... won't be long, just a small fire.”
Toting the sandwich and the bottle, with the end loop of a rubberised flashlight around his wrist, he ambled down to the fire pit. The fire started, and reclining in a weathered green chair, feet on a log and wine on the wide armrest, he started in on the sandwich.
Chapter Nine
A wolf howled across the waves. It was more common now and he smiled. Years ago, the wolves had disappeared along with the deer, the void filled by the irritation of yapping coyotes that opportunistically moved in to fill the gap. Not really feeling them any ill will, he had to admit that he felt no displeasure when, a few years past, they had been killed off by a plague of mange. Now the wolves had returned, along with the deer they pursued. Between 1962 and 1964, two severe winters, disease and mismanagement had erased the deer population. Later, milder winters and the fresh-growth browsing terrain resulting from renewed logging had fostered their return. He had little doubt that global warming was a contributor. If there were now robins in the arctic, you didn't need a scientist to tell you that something was up. The Cree on James Bay have no name for the robin. It's not supposed to be there.
He was curious to see how the deer and abundant moose population would co-exist this time around in Temagami.
A hint of red in the sky lingered over the tree line as Venus made its appearance and the stars began to follow. The sandwich, along with two glasses of red and the warmth of the fire, combined to induce him into reverie and he nodded off.
He was sleeping on the Precambrian Shield. An immense horseshoe of granite formed from cooling lava that had pushed its way to the surface of the earth's crust three billion years ago to cover almost half the country. Evolving constantly since that genesis, four times glacial ice had reached the spot where Jack slumbered. The region had been relentlessly and repeatedly uplifted and subsequently eroded to reveal this colossal area of ancient and largely exposed igneous and metamorphic rock, rich in valuable minerals and ores.
The ice began its final retreat eleven thousand years ago, imposing for the final time its awesome power over the landscape. The receding glaciers ruthlessly removed any of the new sedimentary rock, leaving behind little soil of any value and simultaneously gouged out the thousands of lakes that are the essence of this northern land.
So it was that Lake Temagami, from the Ojibwa for ‘deep water by the shore', was born. A chrysanthemum shaped chasm, three hundred feet deep, holding four billion cubic feet of crystal-clear water spread beneath a surface area covering fifty thousand acres. Its surface was pierced by more than twelve thousand islands of all shapes and sizes, the largest more than a mile in length. The maze was sometimes so confusing to the eye that it was difficult to distinguish the islands from the mainland.
It is said that when the Tem-Augami First Nation prayed to Gitche Manitou for water that he scooped up a great handful of water from the sea and sent it splashing down among the stones of the parched land and it fell among the rocks and the hollows. The largest spill became Lake Temagami and the smaller splashes the surrounding lakes.
From its central hub, four miles in diameter, five arms, each from eight to sixteen miles long, radiated outward in all directions. Arms like jagged fingers, punctuated by bays and inlets but seldom more than a mile across. To its southeast lies Cross Lake, so similar to the main lake that it appears to be a young offspring. Two crossed arms, each six miles in length and connected to Temagami by a wide river system, like a twisting umbilical cord.
Two thousand shoreline miles of unparalleled, breathtaking beauty and diversity. Three hundred foot sheer granite cliffs; the face of Manitou etched in some, looking forebodingly down over the water. Massive rock slides of car and bus-size boulders that plunge into the lake like a static waterfall. Smooth, rock-domed points, sand beaches, marshy moose pastures and shallow river flats nurturing wild rice. Most of it a rocky, gently rising slope, tightly edged at the waterline with a dense and sometimes impenetrable forest of white and red pine, spruce, black and yellow birch, cedar, hemlock, balsam and maple. Some pines seem to grow directly out of the granite.
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sp; The erratic nature of the bottom is treacherous for uninitiated and unsuspecting boaters. One hundred yards offshore the depth can be one or two hundred feet. Several holes exceed three hundred feet. Ten feet off a high bluff it could be one hundred feet. Red and green markers clearly indicated the main channels and for lake novices a strict adherence to that path was imperative. Red on the right away from town, green on the right heading into town.
Jack awoke with a start to the splash of small mouth bass breaking water for night bugs. The fire now mere embers, he considered briefly whether to call it a night. The stars were full out now and compelled him to remain. Casting another log into the pit, he leaned far back looking directly into the night sky. The waxing crescent moon was now approaching one quarter full.
A faint shimmer low in the northern sky augured the Aurora Borealis would put on a show tonight.
Chapter Ten
His travels had made him painfully aware of how small and crowded planet Earth had become. Sooner or later, he feared that everything on this earth was going to be owned by someone at the expense of others. He saw great danger in the prospect. As he looked into the night sky, he could only imagine what would transpire in the years to come ... out there ... in what some believed to be the last frontier.
A satellite chugged across the nightscape and Jack made a wry face. A few years before his birth, the Russians had lobbed a one hundred- and eighty-three-pound, basketball-sized satellite named Sputnik into space. Clearly visible from Earth, it heralded a new era in the history of mankind. Instilling hope and optimism in some, breeding fear and mistrust in others.