Читать книгу Meg Harris Mysteries 6-Book Bundle - R.J. Harlick - Страница 59

Don’t touch her!” Eric cried as I reached for Chantal’s wrist, not wanting to accept the obvious. “There’s nothing you can do,” he said as I pulled my hand away, the feel of cold rigid death clinging to my fingertips.

I might not have liked this dizzy blonde sexpot, but I’d certainly never wanted her dead. And certainly not lying dead with her voluptuous nakedness fully exposed. Without thinking, I reached for a blanket.

“Don’t,” Eric said again. “We have to keep everything exactly the way we’ve found it.”

“What do we do now?” I felt numb.

“Only thing to do, get the police.”

“What about John-Joe?” The worry on Eric’s face expressed my own. “Do you think he did it?”

“I want like hell to say no way, but what else can I think, finding her dead in his shack?”

I looked at the still face of the young woman who’d been bubbling over with life five days ago. In death, the tense prettiness had taken on a sombre beauty that seemed to speak more of innocent youth than the jaded adulthood she had worn.

“Where do you think John-Joe’s gone?” I asked.

“By now, he’s probably a hundred miles from here,” Eric replied grimly, as he walked towards the door. “Come on, let’s be on our way.”

“No,” I said, glancing back at the girl lying alone and forgotten on the sagging camp cot. “You go. I’ll stay with her.”

“It won’t matter to her being left alone.”

“I know…yet I feel she shouldn’t be left by herself any longer.” For some strange reason, I felt the need to watch over her departing spirit.

“It’s not a good idea. I don’t want you here if John-Joe comes back.”

“Why would he come back? She’s dead. As you said yourself, he’s long gone.”

“Still not a good idea. You’ll be completely on your own for an hour or more before I can get back with the police.”

I tried not to think of Chantal being dead or of the possibility of her killer returning. “I’ve made up my mind. I’m staying.”

His soft grey eyes searched mine, as if seeking assurance. Finally, he nodded. “I don’t like it, but you’ll be okay.”

He pulled out a small deerskin pouch from inside his jacket, opened it up and drew out a smooth, flat, greenish stone. “Take this. It’s the healing stone my grandfather gave me when I was a boy. It comes from the river where my greatgrandfather drowned.”

He placed the stone gently in my hand. “This will give you strength.”

Removing my mitt, I grasped the stone firmly. But if I was expecting to feel the tingle of a spirit, I felt only cold, inanimate rock.

“You’re doing the right thing, Meg,” Eric smiled a slow, sad smile that said he understood. “I know you didn’t think much of Chantal, but death changes everything. It is good that you restore harmony in her spirit.” He gave my arm a gentle squeeze and left.

Through the hut’s open door, I watched his strength vanish into a cloud of flying snow. The blizzard had increased its tempo. The balsam across the narrow valley swayed with the force of the wind. Swathes of opaque white swept across the beaver swamp. I shivered and closed the door. Although the wooden latch could easily be broken, it would at least provide a sense of security. I slipped it into place.

I sat on a plastic chair beside a wooden table by the hut’s only window and prepared myself for the long wait. The room’s icy chill pricked my face. I held my cold hands close to the Coleman lamp Eric had placed on the table, but I found that the lamp’s stark glare took away the humanity that had been Chantal. It peered into every hidden crevice of John-Joe’s life in this desolate room. I even felt it attempting to unmask my own shabby secrets. I shivered. I lit the stub of a candle jammed into an empty whiskey bottle and turned off the lamp.

I clasped Eric’s stone and wondered how I was going to survive an hour or two completely alone in the middle of nowhere not only with a dead body, but also with the risk of her murderer’s return. I still had difficulty controlling my fear of the dark, and yet I had volunteered to do something even more frightening. I gripped Eric’s stone.

The soft light from the candle caressed Chantal’s still face. I tried not to look at her ravaged nakedness but couldn’t help it. Her full-breasted lushness was the Venus of every man’s dream. No wonder John-Joe was obsessed. But in death, despite the savagery of her killing, her nudity had taken on a certain artistic serenity, like a Michelangelo sculpture. I found it strange that someone who’d died by such violent means could look so peaceful in death. The stab wounds and the dried blood were but blemishes on the silky smoothness of her skin, except now its ivory colour had taken on a bluish, lifeless hue. Even the dark blots on the bed coverings appeared more like innocent stains than life-draining blood. It looked as if she’d been sick before the killing, for I noticed amongst the bloodstains a large splotch of what looked to be dried vomit. Curious.

It was difficult to know when her last breath had left her, but, if my minimal knowledge were anything to go by, the rigidity in her limbs suggested rigor mortis had set in. Or was it possible she was frozen? At this last thought, I took comfort in realizing that both observations would suggest her death had occurred more than a few hours ago, more than sufficient time for John-Joe to be well beyond the boundaries of this region with little likelihood of returning while I waited.

But what earthly reason would he have for killing her? He’d probably brought her to his out-of-the-way hunting camp for privacy. For some reason, he or maybe Chantal wanted to keep this tryst a secret, otherwise his apartment in the Migiskan village would’ve been a far more comfortable and accessible choice. But casual sex wasn’t usually a motive for murder, especially when both partners wanted it. Still, the vicious attack to her genitals suggested a sexual motive.

I glanced around the small, uninsulated room searching for clues to the murder, even the weapon. The furniture, confined to the basics, included the narrow camp cot where Chantal lay and the scarred wooden table where I sat. The four mismatched chairs, two wood, one metal and the plastic one, had been neatly shoved under the table, almost as if John-Joe had tidied up before leaving. Apart from the bottle holding the candle and the Coleman lamp, the tabletop was bare, with none of the dust or dirt one would expect in such a rustic setting.

The cooking area displayed a similar orderliness. A rusty camp stove with its lid firmly closed lay on a narrow linoleum covered counter. Glasses and other kitchen dishes and utensils were neatly stored on a set of rudimentary shelves made from upright log sections and rough pine planks. A metal basin stood propped against a counter leg with a dishtowel draped over it. Even the wastebasket was empty. So either the couple had been very circumspect with the clean-up, which seemed incredible, or, in a more likely scenario, they’d not bothered with drinking or eating and had gotten right to the point of the rendezvous.

This room was just too tidy, too clean for a murder. Even John-Joe’s rifle was neatly stowed on a shelf, along with a box of shells. Next to it was his fishing tackle box. I didn’t see a knife or any other sharp object that could have been used to kill Chantal. I therefore assumed he had taken it with him. Unless it was lying under Chantal’s familiar pink jacket and pants, lying carelessly on the floor along with her turtleneck, skimpy black bra and panties. I’d leave that for the police to discover.

A pair of John-Joe’s jeans hung from a hook. His orange cap with its telltale hawk feather lay on top of a wooden crate, which I immediately realized meant he and Chantal had come here after I’d seen him leaving the shack with the drugged kids yesterday. This would fix her death at some time within the last twenty-four hours.

I continued to scan the room, relighting the Coleman lamp to provide better illumination. In its penetrating glare, I noticed something glistening partway under the bed. I walked over to discover a small plastic bag lying beside an ashtray. I was about to pick up the bag when I remembered Eric’s warning not to touch anything. Instead, I brought the lamp closer and saw a Ziploc bag similar to the ones Eric and I had found. It too was partially filled with the same dried green weed. I brought my nose close to the butts in the ashtray and smelt a faint odour of marijuana.

It looked as if John-Joe was indeed back on drugs, and it seemed as if I might have found the reason for the couple using this isolated shack. John-Joe and Chantal had wanted to smoke grass without fear of detection. But it still didn’t provide a motive for Chantal’s murder. Marijuana was hardly the kind of drug one killed over, nor was it the kind to incite such a brutal attack.

A sudden stomping on the stairs outside made me jerk around. Eric was back, faster than predicted. I moved to open the door and stopped when it burst open, breaking the latch. But instead of Eric’s comforting presence, John-Joe’s startled eyes stared out from under a snow-encrusted tuque, while flakes blasted through the opening behind him. Strands of long black hair that had escaped from his pony tail clung to the soaked fabric of his nylon windbreaker. His jeans were equally drenched above his frozen running shoes.

“You found her,” he said and broke into a deep hacking cough. Stunned by his sudden appearance, I could only stare back wordlessly. I glanced out the window, hoping to see Eric returning with the police, and saw only John-Joe’s bear-paw snowshoes, one with a red strap, propped against a pine tree.

John-Joe closed the door and walked slowly towards me. Terrified, I backed up and collided with the bed. I found myself sitting on top of Chantal. Too shocked to move, I perched on the stiff body and waited for John-Joe’s next move.

He lifted his hand. “Please. I won’t hurt you. I’m trying to help you get up.”

I hesitated. “I didn’t kill her.” He coughed again. I supposed it was the anguished tone of his voice, not the actual words, that made me grasp his hand. I found myself standing up, looking into his tormented face. His usual cocky assurance was gone.

“I don’t know what to do,” he muttered. He touched her long blonde hair and ran his fingers through its looping waves. “So pretty, like a movie star.” His eyes locked on her brutalized sex, while his hands hovered above the open wounds, almost as if he wanted to close them up. “Such anger. Who could do such a thing?”

He knelt by her bedside, his back braced with his despair. He scattered what I recognized to be tobacco around her head. Then he reached under the bed for the ashtray, dumped the contents on the floor and replaced them with more tobacco. He lit it. As the smoke wafted over her lifeless body, he closed his eyes and chanted softly in Algonquin.

Confused by his words, this unexpected ceremony, I watched and debated what to do. I knew I should make my escape while he was distracted. I could head back down the trail in the hope of running into Eric and the police.

But the solemnity of his actions made me hesitate. There was no violence here. No desire to harm me. And his words, voicing my own thoughts, were hardly those of a killer. So I remained standing at his side. I clutched Eric’s healing stone and felt a faint tingling warmth. Finally, he leaned forward, kissed her softly on the marble forehead and bid her goodbye in Algonquin, “Màdjàshin.” He stood up. “The harmony of her spirit has been restored.”

I sat across the table from him. The lamp’s glare etched the torment on his face, deepened the hollowness of his cheeks, a hollowness that spoke of more than despair.

“You’ve been sick, haven’t you?”

Another spasm of coughing was his answer. He shivered. I suspected as much from a fever as from the cold.

I glanced at the blanket lying partially underneath Chantal, but knew I shouldn’t move it. I removed my outer Gore-Tex jacket instead. “Here, take this. My fleece and long johns will keep me warm.”

Not caring whether it would be destroying evidence or not, I lit a fire in the cast iron stove. When finished, I resumed my seat. “Tell me what happened.”

He remained silent, staring at his trembling hands. Then with a deep sigh, he spoke. “She said she loved the bush, the wild animals. She never got to see any in the city. I told her I’d show her the deer that yard in the cedar swamp downstream. So I brought in supplies and waited until our last day on the trails. I figured we’d have a good couple of days to ourselves.” He twisted the beaded choker around his neck. “I was afraid she wouldn’t show. A couple of months we been seeing each other, but I seen that look in her eye like she was ready for a new man.”

I looked at his cleft chin, the high cheekbones and the amberbrown eyes that normally sparked with energy, and wondered how any girl could turn him down. But Chantal would’ve, for the simple reason she’d been the kind of woman who was more interested in the conquest than the relationship itself.

“But sure enough, when I got here, she was waitin’.”

“Are you saying she got here by herself? How could she? She didn’t know the area.”

He shrugged. “Was no big deal. Drew her a map.”

“But why didn’t you come together?”

“She didn’t want to.” He shrugged again. “Said she didn’t want people knowing where she was going.”

“You mentioned something about the last day of trail clearing. Was that the day you came?”

John-Joe nodded yes.

I glanced around the unusually tidy room, trying to imagine two people living here for the last five days. “Are you always this neat?”

For the first time he seemed to notice more than Chantal’s body. As he cast his eyes around the room, his eyebrows arched with surprise.

“What did you do with them?” he asked.

“With what?”

“The glasses, the bottle.”

“Nothing. They weren’t here when I arrived.”

“Then someone’s been here. No…wait a minute, maybe I cleaned up. I forget.”

“When did she die?”

He closed his eyes, swallowed hard and said, “Few hours after we arrived.”

“What? You mean she’s been lying here dead for five days?” He didn’t bother to answer, just turned his head towards the cracked window. Snow from his woollen hat dropped onto his face, but he didn’t notice.

“How did it happen?”

He continued staring out at the whirling white. I waited. The flakes rasping against the window were almost a welcome distraction.

Finally, he turned tortured eyes towards me. “I don’t know. Only remember lying beside her on the bed. I musta fallen asleep. When I woke up she was dead.”

This was worse than I thought. “Are you telling me that you slept through a vicious stabbing taking place right beside you?” He nodded bleakly.

“No one will believe you.” I found I barely could, and I felt I was looking at a young man who’d gone beyond lying.

“I know, that’s why I ran.”

“So why did you come back?’

But his answer was stopped by the roar of skidoos.