“Hey, except for being slow and gummy, they vacuum the earth with only one lung. What more heavenly duties can you ask of a creature?”
They traversed a grove of sumac with wild roses blooming and forming rose hips, faint perfume for a funeral, not a wedding. The deepening sand, holding hardy beach plants such as silverleaf and yellow verbena, was littered with footprints, rough going for their leather boots.
Some island beaches were Hollywood stretches of fine silica, but Botanical had no pleasures for the foot, only tidal pools carved from sandstone and interspersed with ridges of shale, quartz and black basalt. As they hit the rock-shelved shore and turned, she saw why Tim had christened the huge stump “Butt”. What great wind had toppled the tree, and what greater tide had ferried it here, she couldn’t imagine. A photographer’s dream, except for crude initials carved into its bulk, it lay on its side, and from a branched bare root, pieces of driftwood artfully arranged like planks made a whimsical but secure shelter. Sand underneath had been scooped out so that two people could crawl out of the wind. Closer to the water, they picked their way between glistening tidal pools etched by time, wind and creatures like sea anemones, which hollowed out round homes for their delicate filaments.
A small group had gathered behind the berm of logs and twig trash at the high-tide line. American sea rocket and gumweed, hardy survivors, brushed at Holly’s pants as she walked. By itself, away down the grey basalt shore, was a small bundle. Blinking in the bright light, Holly tipped back her cap and swore softly.
“Covered with a blanket. And twenty feet from the edge. These rocks could have given her fresh abrasions.”
Chipper shielded his face from the sun. “But the medical examiner can tell. No bleeding post mortem, right?”
“Perhaps if a bone is broken with no bruising, that would be the case.” The winds had been high last night, she recalled. Unable to sleep, she had heard waves crashing onto the shore at midnight.
The tide was still going out, but the turn would come. The wind had risen, and a small chop rode the waves. Plumes of spray crashed over the rocks and soaked her boots. She turned to the crowd and managed a friendly but serious smile. “I’m Corporal Martin, investigating the accident. In a few minutes, after we’ve looked around, I’d like to speak to some of you about what you might have seen, starting with the person who found Angie. If you have any information, please wait at the picnic table over there. And could the rest of you clear the beach until we’re finished? It would make our job easier.” She saw three or four children carrying foam snakes and plastic beach pails. “We’d appreciate your taking the young ones a long distance away.”
She heard a few mutterings, but her politeness seemed to work. Except for five or six people, the crowd dispersed. A man of about thirty in swim trunks checked his watch pointedly, then came forward. Lean, with knotty muscles, he sported a colourful tattoo of a dragon, its fiery tongue licking around one shoulder. His hairy legs were slightly bowed. A few knee scrapes testified to the unforgiving rocky shelves. A trickle of blood still flowed. “I saw her in the water. Bob Johnson. It’s getting late for me, so could we—”
Taking a deep breath, Holly met his eyes until he lowered them. “Did you move this girl, Mr. Johnson?”
His voice wavered, and he swiped a hand through his thinning blond hair. “Jesus. It...she was floating in the bay, trapped in the kelp bed. You know these riptides. Another minute, and she could have been dragged out to sea. Thought I was helping out, lady...officer.”
Holly glanced around. Chipper had roped off his fourth tree, hand on his slim hips, and was admiring his work. “I understand. As I said, we need to check the scene first. You’ll be first in line when we’re ready. That’s a promise, sir.”
He grunted and moved off, moving his arms in a “what can you do” expression.
After slipping on latex gloves, Chipper and Holly walked forward. Wind, waves, people running about. Already the scene was a circus. Whatever happened to death in a quiet room? Then she chastised herself, reaffirming the sobriety of the moment. She knelt by the form and gently withdrew the blanket, an old army-surplus model. Probably gathering every sort of material in a car trunk since Mulroney left office. The girl’s eyes stared up at her, revealing the milky sheen of death. The effect wasn’t as shocking as she’d thought, poignant instead. It reminded her of the bright red starfish she’d once brought home from French Beach and left outside to dry on the steps. Slowly it had faded to white, the elusive spark of life gone. Over weeks it disintegrated into calcifications, then blew away as if it had never existed.
Holly blinked, pulling herself back. No major damage was evident on Angie’s face, but scrapes and cuts from the rocks and the marine life would make the coroner’s job trickier. Crows passed raucous approval from the trees. Ever vigilant for food, a host of motley juvenile seagulls floated on the waves, scavenging sea creatures. One on shore pecked at a blue-black mussel shell. One creature’s bier was another’s smorgasbord.
“God, look at that.”
Two
Chipper pointed to an area half an inch long on one of the girl’s forearms, where tiny predators had been chewing in furtherance of future generations. He put his hand over his mouth and stumbled away, one foot tripping in the cracks that fractured the basalt.
“Who’s in charge here? I passed a few villages missing their idiots, or isn’t that phrase acceptable these days?” a jovial voice called, panting for breath around the stem of a corncob pipe. Mason Boone ambled forward, lugging a large black satchel that might have done duty at 22 Baker Street. His rice-sack gut pooched under suspendered grey work pants. Hush Puppies slurping on the wet rock, he urged his bulk toward them with surprising grace.
The B.C. Coroners Service was a unique animal, setting fast and tangled roots in one of Canada’s younger provinces, much of which was still wilderness outside of the sushi bars of Vancouver and the tea rooms of Victoria. The province employed twenty-one full-time coroners, but the approximately one hundred and twenty community coroners dispersed throughout the territory worked on an as-needed basis. Some thought that anyone of good character could qualify as a community coroner, but the preferred background was in the legal, investigative and medical fields. Retired nurses and lawyers made good choices. They did not perform autopsies, but should circumstances warrant, they authorized pathologists to take charge. They were responsible for assembling the facts in a death: identifying the deceased and how, when, where and by what means the person died. Complicated forensics were left to the medical examiner, if one were needed. Fault or blame was not the coroner’s bailiwick, though no one should be incurious.
Boone Mason had been a private investigator in Vancouver before a knee had blown on him during a handball game and compromised his mobility. At sixty-five, he lived quietly off a disability pension supplemented by his occasional coroner assignment and Texas hold’em poker winnings at the legion. His relationship with the RCMP in the Western Communities wasn’t smooth. A stubborn nature often made him a gadfly. “He’s a good man with a beak for the truth,” Reg had told her. “Pain in the ass or not, don’t underestimate him.”
“Poets are goddamn liars. Death is never pretty,” he said after introductions as he put down his satchel and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. He tucked the pipe, apparently empty, into his shirt pocket. “I can see why that poor slob pulled her on shore. Natural reaction. But if anything’s hinky, Christ on a cupcake.”
Holly felt her chest tighten. She looked for Chipper, but he was still parked on the other side of a Sitka spruce. A white handkerchief had come from his pocket, as if he had given up the battle. “But how could you—”
Boone turned his grizzled face to hers. He had assumed the retired male’s habit of shaving only when necessary, but stopped short of wearing a beard like a hundred local Santas. She could also see why Reg had mentioned his nose for the truth. Large and craggy, it gave him the look of a friendly vulture. “Ninety-nine per cent of drownings are accidents. It’s up to me to make recommendations to prevent future harm. Relax. Just