She stopped in mid-sentence as footsteps sounded in the hall. She glanced at me, suddenly anxious. “Don’t tell anyone I said any of this, will you?” She turned and raced back to her typing as a gaggle of students entered the office on some mission or other.
I walked down to the end of a long tiled corridor, peering at the doors as I went. Each door had a glass pane in it, but most of the occupants had carefully blocked them with pictures of animals or pithy sayings.
Unlike the other offices, whose doors were closed, the door to room 202 was open. I knocked and walked in.
Allenby was sitting at a desk surrounded by papers and looked up quickly as I came in. He didn’t look much better than when I had last seen him in the bush, except that his clothes fitted him and were immaculate and his crisp white shirt highlighted the extreme pallor of his face.
“Dr. Allenby. I’m Cordi O’Callaghan.” I held out my hand. “We met up in Dumoine. I stumbled across the body.”
“Oh yes,” he said uncertainly. “Yes, I remember now. Come in, come in.” He didn’t get up to shake my hand because he hadn’t seen the gesture. Not surprising since the man hadn’t looked at me since his first quick preoccupied glance. He remained behind his desk as if it could defend him from my presence.
“Did we arrange to meet? I didn’t ask you to come, did I?” he said, looking at a point somewhere way off to the left of my ear.
“May I sit?” I asked.
Finally he looked at me and smiled. “Oh, yes, sorry, do.”
I studied him for a moment trying to evaluate how much to tell him.
I decided to keep it simple and told him that my lab had been fumigated and my disks stolen and suggested there was a possible link between that and Diamond’s death.
“What possible link could there be?” he asked.
I told him briefly about the significance of the cedar twigs and my certainty that the body had been moved. I was sure the disappearance of my larvae and my data were related to that one fact.
“I don’t know if there’s a link. I may simply be on a wild goose chase, but you’re a researcher. You can understand what it means to have your data stolen and why I’m grasping at the only straw I can find.”
Allenby began shuffling the papers on his desk. His eyes flitted across my face avoiding eye contact. I could see a fine mist of sweat forming on his upper lip. What was he so worried about? Could he have moved the body, and if so, why?
“What do you hope to get from me?” he asked the wall in front of him. I followed his eyes and saw a picture of a young woman and a small girl swinging on a hammock, laughing at the photographer. The little girl was the spitting image of Don.
“I don’t know. I’m hoping something will twig. What can you tell me about Diamond?”
“Diamond?” The word rang out like the tolling of a bell and lingered in the air, as if it were the first time Allenby had ever uttered the name. Finally he shifted in his seat, but the silence dragged on. Suddenly Allenby looked directly at me.
“He was a bit of a legend. He knew the bush backwards, could survive on nothing. You know the sort of thing. Give him a knife, a tinder and flint, and some snare wire and fishing line and he could live forever. Sweet irony that he got done in by a bear.”
I said nothing. There seemed to be nothing to say.
“We were working on a paper together, a cycle paper on lynx and hare. Hares are my baby, lynx his. Now, I don’t mean to be rude but I don’t see why any of this should interest you. He’s dead, isn’t he? Mauled by a bear, so why are you poking about? It won’t bring your insects back to life and it’s not going to help you get your disks back. It isn’t related at all. Just some macabre coincidence.”
I didn’t say anything, waited. The silence lengthened until Don couldn’t stand it any longer.
“He was a good man. Ruthlessly honest in all his dealings, almost to a fault, and when he got behind a cause he gave everything he had to it.”
“Like the logging?”
“Yeah,” sighed Allenby. “Like the logging. It became a personal vendetta to him.” He glanced out the window, as though he were seeing a magnificent pine slowly topple, and then dragged his eyes back to me.
“Jake organized everyone to oppose logging up here in the Dumoine area. It’s prime logging country, has been for generations, but the logging companies haven’t done much replanting and the clear-cutting of the past has caused a lot of erosion.”
“How many of the faculty have study sites up in the area?”
Allenby looked at me and nodded.
“Yes. That’s right. We have a biology station up in the area and most of us have some ongoing and longstanding projects up there, either our own or those of our graduate students. If the area is logged, lots of research could go up in smoke. So yes, Diamond did have a very personal reason for fighting the logging companies. He’d been studying lynx and bobcat in the area for fifteen years. So, it was not all altruistic, although he probably would have argued otherwise.”
“I understand he organized a barricade to keep the loggers out.”
“Yeah. And it worked. Jake was the sort of guy that could inspire you. He was the catalyst. Now he’s dead, and no one has taken over his leadership. Without him the cause is winding down. Because of the barricade and the publicity surrounding it we got a temporary injunction, but it didn’t last long. Now the loggers are poised to move in and we’re without a leader. You see, Jake was one of a kind. He really believed we had to win or the world would collapse. That’s what drove him. No one else has quite the same drive.”
“Was he well liked?”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Allenby raised his thin voice to the stretching point, was about to say something and then thought better of it. Instead his voice dropped and he said, “Yeah. He was well liked by most. He had people who didn’t much like him, loggers and people like that, but I don’t think he had any real enemies.”
“Were you in the area on or around the day he died? Did you see anything that might help me?” He hesitated only a fraction.
“I was out there well east of his site, working on a hare census in a new area. Left for the field before he did, and came out about a week before Leslie and I bumped into you.”
“What were you doing up there when I ran into you?”
Allenby stared past me, his round wet eyes unblinking.
“We were manning the barricade with about thirty other people. Didn’t you see it?”
I shook my head.
“It’s just up the road from the biology station. If you came by the portage, though, you’d bypass it, so I guess that’s why you never saw it. We’ve been using the biology station as a storage spot for food and other supplies.”
“Was anyone else with you who was out in the field who might have bumped into Diamond on his last day or seen something that could help me?”
“I don’t really know what you’re looking for so I can’t say. I didn’t see him. I generally prefer to do my fieldwork alone. You should check the bio station schedule, though. We have an in/out roster. Everyone signs out and signs in again when they return. We have to record where we’re going, who with, and for how long. It’s an honour system, but everybody observes it for their own safety. Besides, Davies doesn’t take kindly to wasting the budget on emergency rescue operations. They’re expensive and if they are unnecessary, well … you understand.”
“Where can I find this roster?”
“Dr. Davies keeps all the old ones in the registrar’s office. Roberta, my grad student, is helping out there this week. Someone’s sick, I think, and she needed the cash. It costs a lot to get a grad degree these days. Go ask her.”
“Who else should I talk to?”
“Diamond’s grad student, Patrick Whyte, might be able to tell you something. He sometimes went out in the field with Diamond, but I don’t think he went on this last trip. Anyway, Diamond and I weren’t that close, just work colleagues. I was far too
conservative for his liking and not athletic enough. You should also speak to Leslie. They were friends once.”
His voice suddenly sounded hollow and empty.
“Look. I’m sorry. I have a load of work. Leslie’s new office is just down the hall. Diamond’s grad student is in the lab, room 205. But he won’t be there right now. He’s demonstrating a lab. But you’d better speak to Davies. He gets furious when things happen around here that he doesn’t know about.”
I stepped thankfully out of his office and went back up to see Roberta. Allenby had unnerved me and I wasn’t sure why. The tap tapping was still going on, and I popped my head around the barrier. She jumped.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you, but Don said there was a roster for the biology station that I could take a look at.”
“Oh sure. You mean the ‘come look for me if I don’t show’ book? It’s over here.”
She led me across the cluttered space to a large desk heaped with magazines; above it was a huge topographical map with red pins scattered about. I waved my hand toward it while she got out the roster and put it on the table in front of me.
“Are these all the study sites for the faculty?”
“Yep. You got it. The little red pins mean people in the field right now. All those other little pins of various colours mean study sites.
There were strings linking together all the blue pins, all the yellow, and so forth, so at a glance you could see all the study sites.
“Who’s yellow?”
“That’s Don. He works in the area east and south of the bio station.”
“You’re Don’s student, right?”
“That’s right. Just finishing up my master’s. Roberta Smith. I’m doing a population study on hares, but most of my fieldwork is done. I’m glad of that. I don’t really like the bush. But he’s up there almost as much as Diamond.”
I remembered the picture of the woman and the little girl.
“What about his family? How does he juggle his time with them?”
She frowned.
“Oh no. Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“He doesn’t really have a family anymore.”
“But the picture in his office?”
“Yeah, his wife and kid. Really sad.”
I felt sick, anticipated what was coming. Waited.
“That picture was taken just before his wife died, five years ago now, I think. It was a godawful accident. They were driving home one night. Don fell asleep at the wheel, or so they say. They barrelled through a stop sign and were flattened by a truck. His wife died instantly, and the kid, who was only four years old at the time, is now a vegetable. But Don won’t give up hope that she’ll get well. The poor man was wracked with guilt and has spent every blessed penny and gone into debt giving her the best care in a private nursing home. He still talks about the day she’ll come home, but we all know she never will. He won’t face up to that, poor man. He’d do anything for the poor kid.”
I tried to say something, anything, but what do you say to a story like that?
“He changed after that. Never the same again, they say. Some men can get over their grief, but his daughter is always there to remind him, I guess. He moonlights at other jobs to help pay for the poor kid. Shows, too. His work here is suffering, and Davies is sitting on him pretty hard.”
Again, I had absolutely nothing to say. All I could think of was the pain the man had gone through.
“But it’s not all bad. He and Diamond have just done a paper together, but Diamond wanted to postpone publication for some reason, so it’s on hold. Don was really disappointed — so was I, because my name is going to be on it too. Diamond wouldn’t tell Don why, just asked him to be patient. When the paper gets published it will give Don a boost and hopefully help to get him some more funding. At first Diamond really was doing him a favour collaborating like that, but then Don’s data turned out to be good, so I guess Diamond was right to take him on. Surprised everyone, though, because Don’s work hadn’t been very good since the accident. Sloppy, you know.” She shrugged and said, “Diamond was a good man. He didn’t deserve such an awful death.” Roberta hastily wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and I wondered if the tears were for Diamond or Don.
I stood there like an idiot trying to think of something to say, but there really wasn’t anything that would make her feel better. I gave her some time to get herself back together again and then gently asked, “Does Don have a semi-permanent camp like Diamond’s?”
She shook her head. “Only Diamond did.” She said slowly, “You see, he loved the bush. Often went up just to write his reports and to get away from his students. Even if he had no fieldwork to do. Sometimes I think he started doing it to get away from his wife. Often he’d go up just for a night, mark some papers, and come back in time for afternoon lectures. I used to have a bird, ’cause I demonstrated his comparative anatomy class and I was always afraid he’d miss classes.”
“That’s a hell of a portage to get to his place for just an overnighter.”
I was remembering the rain-mucked steep cliff paths and treacherous footing Ryan and I had stumbled over in our haste to get help. Even in excellent shape it wasn’t your average sort of daily walk.
“Oh, that route. You been there? Canoeist, right?”
I nodded. “It was a bitch.”
She laughed. “Yeah, only the canoeists take that route. Diamond hardly ever used it, and no one at the station did. There’s another path, only a quarter-mile from the road through the forest. Easy footing. He’d drive up, park his car just out of sight in the bush, and walk in. Take him ten minutes at most. And he was real close to the barricade. He set it up just on the road between the biology station turn off and his portage. Very convenient for him. He sometimes slept at his camp when he was on the barricade.”
“You were part of that group, right?”
“What? The barricade? Oh sure. It was a hoot. We’d all go up as often as we could, take our sleeping bags and stuff. Diamond made sure there was all kinds of food and stuff, and his friend Shannon oversaw all the cooking. Just like camp.”
“Is the barricade still up?”
“It’s on hold. We got an injunction before Diamond died, but it was overturned. I don’t think we’ll stop the logging now, especially now that Diamond is gone. He was the leader.”
“Did the rest of the faculty support the cause?”
“A lot of us did, but Davies was furious. Diamond’s graduate student, Patrick Whyte, wasn’t too enamoured with it either. Not sure why. He’s usually a gung-ho environmentalist, but then he’s been working his butt off to get his thesis done by Christmas so he’s not had much time to get involved, I guess.”
She didn’t sound very convinced.
“He and Diamond actually had a vicious row over the barricade. Patrick thought it was stupid and would just make things worse, but there was no swaying Diamond. He was a stubborn son of a bitch. Even Davies had no effect on him. He just railroaded over everyone when he thought something was right.”
I picked up the roster and began flipping through it.
“I have to get back to work,” she said. “Just leave the roster on the table when you’re finished, ’kay?”
I thanked her and turned my attention to the roster. Fifteen minutes later I had it all. Diamond had died sometime on the eleventh of July, four days before he was due back. Leslie had signed out on July 5, returning July 13, the day before Ryan and I had stumbled upon the body. Don and Roberta had left July 8, returning July 11. Patrick had signed out from July 7 to July 11. Even Eric Davies had been out in the bush July 10 to 12 along with two grad students. And who knew how many people were manning the barricade a mere ten-minute walk from where Diamond’s body was found at his camp?
With so many people in the bush the week Diamond died, why had it taken so long for his body to be discovered?
I found Leslie in among a whole truckload of boxes in Diamond’s old of
fice. His name was still on the door, and the snarling face of a Canada lynx growled out at me. I knocked, and a moment later Leslie appeared at the door eating an apple. Her black closely cropped hair made her face look quite masculine, but the rest of her was definitely a woman.
“Well, so we meet again.”
“Looks like you got promoted?”
“Yeah. Soon to be full professor from associate. But what a way to do it, eh? Over Diamond’s dead body. Nothing like taking over the responsibilities of a dead man.” I was startled by the bitterness in her voice, but then she smiled and I thought maybe I had been mistaken.
“We never properly introduced ourselves back up there in the woods. Leslie Mitchell.” She hastily switched the apple to her left hand, wiped her right hand on her pants, and held it out to me.
“Cordi O’Callaghan,” I said as I gripped her hand in mine. I winced at the strength of it. This was getting to be ridiculous. Had everyone learned that a limp grip labelled you a wimp? The harder you squeeze the more important you are?
“Come on in,” she said and led me into the chaos of her office. There were boxes everywhere, all in various stages of being unpacked.
She knelt down in front of a box and started rifling through its contents.
“You’re an entomologist aren’t you?” she asked.
“A zoologist, really, but I often work with insects.”
“And you’ve lost all your specimens, as well as your disks.” She looked up at me, and seeing my surprised look she laughed. “This is a small university. Nothing is private here, and we stick by each other. Don just phoned to warn me you were coming around.”
She sat back on her heels, a file folder in each hand.
“Being a zoologist I know what it’s like to lose data or have an experiment go wrong and the hopes of tenure with it. I gather you were hoping to recover the disks. What makes you think they’d still be around?”
“Hope. Desperation. I don’t know. They weren’t trashed at my office. They were physically removed, so I have some hope they’re still around, that whoever took them realizes what they mean and won’t destroy them. There’s nothing on them that would be the least bit useful to anyone but me.”
Forever Dead Page 11