An hour later, they turned off Route 69 into the Ministry of Natural Resources on McFarlane Lake Road. The complex lay in a low valley of emerging boreal forest punctuated by the occasional conifer. Mutt parked in the lot, and they headed to the main office.
A tall, older admin assistant looked up from her computer. A metal sign on the desk gave her name as Marj Brousseau. On the walls were advertisements for environmental initiatives, hunting and fishing regulations and topographic maps. Taking their names and shaking hands, she responded to their inquiry with a sad smile, as she removed her slim, wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed the bridge of her aquiline nose. Tumbling strawberry-blonde hair streaked with grey was gathered at the back of her neck by a colourful paisley scarf. “I didn’t know Gary long, but he was a nice fellow. Serious about his job but with a good sense of humour. What a terrible accident.”
Mutt swallowed, shuffled his feet as he looked at a poster of duck species. “We came to clean out his office, Ms. Brousseau. If you can—”
“Of course. It’s Marj. I’ll call Dr. Rosaline Silliker. She’s our supervisor.” She punched in a few numbers.
Minutes later, a tall, dark chestnut brunette around forty with short, artistic curls entered the office, her arm extended from a tailored silk suit that brushed her mid-knee. Her legs were muscular without being overbearing, as if she worked out in Pilatian control of each group. “Thanks for coming so promptly at this sad time. We’ll miss Gary. His research was critical to the survival of these local herds. He had such a commitment to bringing back the elk, both for tourism—”
“And hunting?” Belle added, one corner of her mouth rising. She’d visited the Ontario Fur Managers website last year in connection with a trapper in her woods. Despite the occasional garbage raid, she and her resident bears had crossed paths many times without incident. No question that encounters were on the rise since cancellation of the spring hunt, a hot button that pitted gun-toting Northerners against Torontonians who had nothing but the odd raccoon or skunk to bother them.
“Animals are a resource. We’re here to keep them renewable. Farther north where jobs can be scarce, outfitters rely heavily on the traffic, and a few family lodges have suffered.” Rosaline’s tone was pleasant, but with a tinge of a bureaucratic lecture. The Ministry attracted criticism trying to please both sides, but Belle suspected that money was the bottom line.
Following her down a long corridor, they came to an office crowded with two battered oak desks, filing cabinets and floor-to-ceiling bookcases. One shelf held toothy skulls of small mammals, rabbit, porcupine, a weasel. A few jars of formaldehyde held mysterious objects, which Belle wasn’t sure she wanted to examine. Mutt coughed as a musty smell tweaked their noses. At one desk, a young man of about twenty typed information into a computer spreadsheet. He wore jeans and a sweatshirt, the sleeves cut roughly to reveal an eagle tattoo on one arm. A mop of buttery hair, the kind that made mothers spit on their fingers and tamp cowlicks into respectability, gave him a pleasantly boyish look.
“Dave Watson,” he mumbled, as they introduced themselves.
“Dave’s a master’s degree intern at Shield University. He can tell you what belonged to Gary.” Rosaline looked around with a helpful smile. “Do you need a cart or dolly? How about some boxes?”
Dave seemed rather cool. Busy though he might have been, he didn’t offer to shake hands and offered no commiseration about their friend. Shortly after, a handyman arrived with packing material and a flatbed wagon. Working slowly and carefully, Belle and Mutt emptied Gary’s file cabinets. “What about the books?” Mutt asked.
Dave looked up and pointed out two shelves. A bibliophile, with her mother’s Pauline Johnson’s first editions of poetry as a prize, Belle watched Mutt touch them like old friends, the last remnant of a life that ended halfway to the finish line. Ruminants of the Boreal Forest; Introduction to Zoology; North American Elk: Ecology and Management; Mosses, Lichens and Ferns of Ontario; piles of The Canadian Journal of Zoology and The Canadian Field Naturalist as well as her own favourites, Peterson’s Animal Tracks and Stokes’ Nature in Winter.
In another cabinet Dave indicated, Mutt turned up several plastic baggies with dry brown shapes. He wrinkled his nose, but Belle had no reservations about examining them. Similar to moose droppings and virtually odourless, thanks to a meatless diet, these pellets someone would dissect in a more complete analysis.
On Gary’s desk was a silver-framed picture, face down. Mutt turned it over to reveal himself in star quality from a Toronto studio. With a rising colour to his cheek, he tucked it under his arm. Then he asked, “Do you know what he was working on recently, Dave?”
“Naw. I’ve been out in the field the last two weeks.” He didn’t look up from his computer, presenting merely a hunched back. “Listen, if you can finish, I need some quiet in here.”
Mutt and Belle exchanged eye rolls and gave the office another scan. Mutt opened a deep cabinet and found a few more files. Then he reached over his head onto a seemingly empty shelf, fumbling at first with a quizzical expression, then retrieving a strange object. “This is weird. Is it yours, Dave?”
Dave turned with a sigh and grunted. “Do I look like a garbageman?”
Mutt and Belle examined the old Pepsi can. The design didn’t look recent, but neither did it appear vintage. The aluminum had begun to fade and corrode, more than sun damage. “I wonder why he kept this? Or maybe it belonged to someone else here years ago.” Mutt spoke so loudly and pointedly that the man had to answer.
“I saw him with it. God knows why it interested him.”
Mutt shrugged, and he fingered it gently so as not to cut himself. “Gary never did anything without a reason. Let’s take it.” To wrap the can safely, he found an empty plastic bag in a wastebasket.
As they were leaving, they saw Rosaline Silliker embrace a tall, balding man with a clerical collar. “I’ll get an oil change for the car and come back at five, dear. You make the reservations at Verdicchio’s.” Sudbury’s premier restaurant, a doctor at the table on the left and a lawyer on the right. A minister’s and a middle-ground civil servant’s salaries? Either they’d won the lottery, or there was money in the family.
“Finished already?” asked Rosaline, turning to Mutt and Belle. “Did you get everything? Is there any other way I can help?”
Mutt nodded thanks, but Belle could tell that his voice was breaking. He soldiered his way outside, hauling the cart, as she exchanged female glances with Rosaline.
“I couldn’t help wondering why Dave was so unfriendly. Is he normally like that?”
Rosaline raised one professionally plucked eyebrow and folded her hands in front of her. Her nails were short and buffed. “Homophobic, I’m afraid. He was surly to Gary from the beginning.”
Belle put her hands on her hips in a gesture of incredulity. “What? Such a young man? Hard to believe he’d be so judgmental.”
“A very provincial attitude. He comes from way northwest of here, where they’re not very . . . enlightened. Sioux Lookout’s the nearest town. Maybe I was wrong, but I refused to buy into it by reassigning him to another office.”
“Some people want to turn back the clock.”
“You and I both remember how women had to fight for equality even in our lifetimes.” Rosaline nodded. “Gary was a brick about it, though. Not a word of complaint. His approach must have worked, because things quieted down.”
Belle managed to pass Rosaline and Marj business cards before she left the site. An hour later, back on Edgewater Road, as they unpacked, a large, hairy animal snuffled its way around the yard, pawing at a clump of sage in the herb garden. “Get out of here!” Mutt yelled. The beast bared its yellow teeth, one incisor chipped.
“It’s Bill Strang’s dog. Has he been bothering you? Sometimes he chases cars.” She bent to scoop up a handful of gravel, a gesture any canine understood.