Murder at Lost Dog Lake

by Vicki Delany

  A gigantic black bear stood beside the remains of the kitchen pack. At least he looked gigantic to me, stretched all the way up to his full, truly impressive height. He turned to face us, displaying a handsome mouthful of teeth and fangs, and for good measure made sure that we noticed the well sharpened claws, each one easily six inches long.

  The creature roared a warning. I have never before been so totally frozen into inaction. I simply stood and stared, open-mouthed.

  Do bears climb trees or were we supposed to climb trees to get away from them? Couldn’t remember.

  None of my companions moved. I heard a gentle whimper from off to one side, but not another sound. They were as gobsmacked as I.

  Out of the corner of one eye, I could see Craig edge slowly towards the fire pit. The bear noticed the movement as well and followed with his eyes. He roared his objections once again, but made no further move.

  Craig grabbed a cooking pot and lid, left on a log overnight, and brought them together with a rousing clang. He banged pot and lid like a drum in a totally demented high-school marching band, shouting all the while at the top of his voice.

  The bear eyed our campsite once more, dropped to his forelegs, turned on his heels and in one soundless movement disappeared into the forest.

  Craig continued beating his drum, the rest of us still standing as if we were playing a game of statues, until we simultaneously decided the danger was gone.

  A babble of voices erupted, all at once. Everyone alternately shouting and crying as we reassured each other that it was now all right.

  It took a long while for our over-stretched nerves to settle back down. But they did.

  “Hey,” Barb cried. “It’s stopped raining.”

  And it really had.

  We cheered and shouted and yelled some more.

  Joe and Jeremy were all for hightailing it out right that minute, but saner heads prevailed. There wasn’t a lot we could accomplish in the dark, except get thoroughly lost. As much as we would all like to pack up the canoes, turn tail and run, we agreed that we would have to wait for daybreak.

  We returned to our tents and the remainder of the sleepless night that lay before us.

  I lay awake for most of what remained of the night, restless, eyes open wide, mind working overtime. I shifted through the events of the past week and sorted out a sea of emotions, terrors, fears, loves and hates. Images of anger and serenity, rebellion and acceptance.

  I dozed for a bit, and when I woke up I knew what I did not want to know.

  No one else had slept any better than I. The camp stirred at the first thin rays of light.

  The sky was perfectly clear, and the few lingering morning stars were welcome indeed. Rachel and Barb danced a little jig around the dead campfire, crying out their joy.

  Before I even had the sleep wiped out of my eyes, I pulled two people out of their tents and whispered to them, urgent and pleading, trying desperately to sound full of confidence and in control.

  Reluctantly they agreed to follow my orders, as gradually anger replaced the suspicion etched into their faces.

  Watching them go, I closed my arms around me and hugged my chest. Wet and cold and hungry as I was, the chills now came from deep inside.

  Chapter 21

  Day 11: Morning.

  With a sinking heart I watched the killer prepare to break camp and then take a short break to sit alone on the rocks overlooking the lake.

  I searched through the events of the past few days, hoping to find something else, some clue that would take me in another direction, some mitigating circumstance that would allow me to forget all that I had seen. It’s not your job any more, I reminded myself. The rain has finally stopped and we can now get out of here and forget that this ever happened. But I thought of Dianne’s eyes, so dark and so full of grief that I couldn’t allow her to wonder forever. And, most strangely of all, I felt the tug of duty, of responsibility. Not only to the police force that I had left but to the society in which I lived and in which I still believed.

  I tossed my daypack down on the rock and settled beside him. Together we watched the sun come up over the lake. It was the first natural light we had seen for three days and the forest welcomed it as much as we did. All around us birds harmonized in a chorus of delight. Rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks scampered about to greet the light as it cast welcome beams across the water, and then rose higher in the sky to reach warm tendrils into the dark depths of the forest.

  “Time to go,” he said. “We’ll ask Jeremy and Joe to stay with the body. The authorities will send someone to get it and then it will all be over. I hope this hasn’t put you off adventure camping.”

  “No, Craig. Nothing could do that. But I thought I had left my job behind and it’s a bit of a shock to realize that I can’t do that.”

  He pretended to misunderstand me. “None of us can really leave the city. Our lives follow us wherever we go, don’t they?”

  A fox sniffed its way out of the safely of the trees and approached us, nose wiggling and body trembling. He was plump and shiny, his coat glistening with the last drops of rainwater. Laughing, despite my gloom, I pulled the leftovers of an earlier night’s granola bar dessert out of my sweatshirt pocket and tossed bits his way. I was careful to avoid giving him the chocolate chips and popped them into my mouth instead.

  I broke a hunk off the bar and offered it to Craig. He accepted with a nod and tossed the food into his mouth. More gray hairs had appeared in his beard, and a few salted his sideburns and the lock of hair that fell over his forehead. The delicate skin under his eyes and at the corners of his mouth were lined with marks that would never be erased.

  “What type of mushrooms did you feed to Scott?” I asked. I struggled to keep my voice calm although my heart was beating so hard in my chest I thought it would burst through skin and bone.

  His gray eyes flashed momentarily and then the blank look settled over them, again trying to misunderstand the question.

  “You did a great job of rounding up all those mushrooms for supper the other night. Knowing what to pick and what to discard. Made me think of how much we trusted you and all. Made me think also of Scott who was supposed to take this trip, and came down so sick, right out of nowhere, the night before we left.”

  Craig laughed. It was sharp, strained sound. A red squirrel chattered to us from high up in a jack pine, warning us to keep our useless human cacophony to ourselves. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that.

  “Made me wonder,” I continued, “what could put a man into such a rage that he would strike out with a canoe paddle. Not a reliable weapon, I would have thought.”

  “I don’t see where you get your ideas, Leanne. Scott gets sick, a bit of a stretch to leap to the conclusion that it was mushroom poisoning and even if it was, that I poisoned him on purpose. And as for the canoe paddle, well anyone in this group of fools could have swung that.”

  “True enough. But not many people could walk away and leave Richard to bleed to death in a muddy puddle.”

  “What are you saying, Leanne?” He looked at me. The gray eyes bored into mine and I thought how young he was. I was aware of how alone we were, out on this patch of rocks overlooking the lake. The sounds of the camp and preparations for the frantic flight back to civilization were almost swallowed up by the dense woods.

  “I am saying, Craig, that you killed Richard.”

  He said not a word. I swallowed and kept talking. “For some reason he bothered you from the beginning, that was obvious. Sometimes people just don’t get along, so I didn’t much care what the problem was between you two.” I fingered a piece of pale green moss growing between the rocks on which I sat. Soft as velvet, springy as a mattress, it rose up into my fingers with delight like a living being. I stroked rhythmically while my thoughts churned and my heart beat.

  In one quick motion Craig drew himself to his full height. He loomed over me and I gripped my patch of moss.

  “You’re too damned cl
ever for your own good, you cop bitch.” No longer young, no longer handsome, he glared at me from his impressive height, his eyes full of fear and of hate.

  I flicked my fingers casually through my hair and returned his stare. “Why did you do it, Craig? What happened between you and Richard?” I kept my voice calm and in control although my heart pounded and I wanted to wipe my sweat-soaked hands on my shorts.

  “God damned bastard. He killed my father, that’s what he did.” Craig began to pace. Threat over, at least for now, my heart settled back into my chest.

  I wondered how long it would take Dianne and Joe to reach help. Hours if they encountered a ranger, days if they got lost. Too long, much too long, to do me any good. I pictured them in my mind’s eye. Joe was the strongest of the remaining group, and Dianne knew the woods the best. What other choice did I have?

  “Oh sure, my father killed himself.” Craig’s voice rose to a fevered pitch. “He was such a fucking loser.” I’m no psychologist but I figured that this was a bad sign; first Craig was blaming Richard, now his father.

  He gathered a bunch of small, flat rocks in one massive paw and threw them out into the lake. Each one skipped merrily across the sun-streaked water. Three, four, even five or six times. Growing up on the shores of Lake Ontario, it was my life’s ambition to make three skips. I was perversely angry that this man could make so many, so thoughtlessly, where I had failed so often.

  “My dad went into a business partnership with Richard. I was just a kid but I knew it wasn’t a good idea right from the start. It was always difficult; I could hear my mom and dad arguing late into the night when they thought I was asleep. Dad actually mortgaged the house that they had bought with Mom’s inheritance when her grandparents died. He put the funds into the business and Mom was so angry with him. But then the money started flowing in and she was okay with it. All of a sudden we had lots of money, a trip to Disney World, a big new TV, a great stereo for my room. Even an in-ground swimming pool in the back yard. I was the most popular kid on the block, that year.

  “Then one day he came home and shut himself up in the study. The strain of work, Mom told me. But I could tell that she was worried. He didn’t leave that study for two whole days. She packed me off to school, trying to smile, trying to be brave. But I knew something was wrong. Christ, how couldn’t I?”

  He kicked at a stone. I winced at the crack of bone and flesh against solid rock, but Craig didn’t even notice.

  “On the third day he went to work. Oh, yea he was still angry and talked mean to Mom. He yelled at my sister because her skirt was too short. An old skirt, one she’d worn all year. She started to cry, and Mom got upset, but we were still glad because he had come out of that room and was going back to work.

  “He came home later, after I got back from school. Didn’t say a word to us, but slammed the front door and went into the study. My sister was still out and Mom offered me cookies and milk in the kitchen. If I didn’t already know something was wrong, that would have done it. She never baked. I was eating my cookies, raisin and oatmeal…”

  He shook his head, full of remembered sorrow and never lost pain. “I have never eaten a raisin again, would you believe it.” He choked on the words, took a deep breath, and continued.

  “I was finishing my last raisin and oatmeal cookie when we heard this noise, this incredible, loud noise, coming from the study.”

  He wiped a tear off his cheek, a rough swipe full of anger as if he was ashamed to be caught crying while talking about his father’s death. The fox came noising around again. Braver this time, it almost reached out to touch my hand. Impatient, afraid that any little thing would disrupt Craig’s narrative, I waved frantically at it. The fox took the hint and slipped back into the trees.

  “We knew what it was. Right away. I guess you hear that sound so much on TV that when you hear it in real life you automatically know what it is.

  “My mom wouldn’t let me into the study. She stood in front of the door and screamed at me to call 911. I was really mad at her, then, but she was right of course. There was nothing we could do and she didn’t want me to see what he had become.

  “She let the ambulance people into the house and made me go upstairs to my room. I could hear them down below. I could tell by the way that they were talking and moving around that they weren’t in any sort of hurry.”

  My heart breaking for him, I still was able to enjoy the light touch of the first of the sun’s rays as they caressed my face and arms.

  But it was a long way from that teenage boy, alone in his room with the fabulous stereo, to the tortured young man on the rocks beside me.

  “I realize that would have been tough, Craig. My father also died way too young. But I don’t see what all that has to do with what happened here over the last couple of days.”

  “It was Richard who killed my dad. I know he shot himself, but he did it because Richard ruined him.

  “He came to the funeral. It was awful - my mom absolutely lost it and flew at him, yelling and screaming that he was a crook and a murderer, trying to get at his eyes with her nails. She always had really nice nails, long, clean, sharp and painted bright red. She went for a manicure every week.”

  He turned and smiled at me. “I have never liked a woman with long red nails. They look like bloody claws. Makes my skin crawl. I’m glad you keep yours short.”

  I shivered.

  “Anyway, she had to be carried her out of the church, screaming the whole time. They took her to the hospital and she missed the rest of the funeral. We stayed behind with my grandma. And Richard Blackwell sat there, staring straight ahead, not giving a damn.”

  The sun was rising over the water. Warm and welcoming, it stretched life-affirming rays across the wet rocks and through the sodden, dripping trees. I could feel my sweatshirt drying out on my body.

  “How do you know he didn’t care? Men of that age can’t show their emotions very well, you must know that.”

  His face changed in an instant. The mildly flirtatious smile disappeared as if it had never been and he glared at me, red eyes full of fury and remembered hate.

  “You don’t know anything, Leanne. He didn’t give a damn because when my mom lost everything, the cars, the club membership, her self-respect, her happiness, her husband, the bastard didn’t do a thing to help her. You see, all the stuff that my dad bought for us was with money borrowed from the company. He’d sunk the mortgage money into their stupid scheme so we lost the house. My mom was so goddamned trusting that she didn’t even have her name in the house that had been bought with her inheritance. The company went bust, bankrupt, out of business.

  “And good-old Richard conveniently didn’t owe it one single cent. I heard Mom on the phone crying and begging him to help her. I picked up the extension and listened in. He said it was my dad’s fault. That if Dad was stupid enough to spend money he didn’t earn, he, Richard, didn’t owe us anything.”

  Craig sunk to the ground beside me. He was crying now, full scale weeping with unstoppable tears and gut wrenching shakes. He hugged his knees into his chest and sobbed.

  I could only sit on my patch of rock and watch. The way I saw it, Richard might have acted unethically, but Craig’s father was nothing but an idiot to get himself tangled up into those sort of debts, and then a heartless bastard to kill himself, leaving his innocent family to face the consequences all alone. But it wouldn’t help Craig to say so. “Where’s your mom now?”

  He looked at me coldly. “Dead, of course. She’d never worked a day in her life and Dad didn’t have any insurance. Suddenly she had no home and no money, huge debts to pay, and two kids to take care of. She had to go on welfare. She was so humiliated. She lost all her friends. They all dropped her like that.” He snapped his fingers. As soon as she quit the golf club and we moved to a rented house in a crummy part of town, well then they didn’t want anything to do with her anymore.”

  I sighed, remembering the old feminist saying: “Every wom
an has one man standing between herself and welfare.”

  “She died about two years after Dad. I was seventeen by then, so I went out to work and earned a bit of money to pay for school, part-time. My sister, Marcia, moved in with my grandparents. She’s okay now. Has a nice little catering business.”

  Enough of the past. “Tell me what happened two days ago, Craig.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him, really I didn’t. I only wanted him to say he was sorry that he ruined my family.

  “I recognized him back at the lodge. I thought it might be him, soon as he stepped out of the van. But of course, time changes people, so I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t take me long to realize it really was him. I didn’t even need to hear his name to know. Nothing could change that attitude. Arrogant prick. Of course he didn’t recognize me.”

  He laughed, a dry, mirthless laugh. “I guess I’ve changed a bit. He probably didn’t even bother to notice me at Dad’s funeral.

  “I decided that I needed to go on this trip, thinking that maybe I could talk to him, get a chance to tell him how I feel.”

  He stared out over the lake, silent and brooding. It was heavenly to see the most wonderful of all colors, blue, all around us again. The morning sun delighted in the sheer joy of tossing cheerful patterns of dancing light on the surface of the water and drying out the rain-sodden leaves of the trees.

  “So I fed Scott some bad mushrooms. Chop them up finely enough, mix them in with some nice fat good ones, and who’s to notice? Craig’s special, saved for after the rich city folks are all snug in their beds. Right?”

  I pictured Rita’s face, white and pinched and frightened, as they rushed Scott to the hospital. Even though it happened as I had suspected, it still came as a shock to hear him come right out and say it. My face reflected my feelings.

  “I knew what I was doing, Leanne.” He scolded me lightly. “Scott would only have been sick for a day or two, and then right back to normal. No real loss. I’ll share the money I earned for this trip with him.”