LITMIR.BIZ

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though it was nearly impossible to catch someone in the act.

      She made the introductions. “Are the students camping here? It wasn’t allowed in my day.”

      Tim Jones waved a gnarly hand. “No way. Botanical’s too fragile and rare for that kind of disturbance. There’s an RV park in town. ’Course, you can’t always stop it. Shut the gate, they find a way around. Nature of the beast to keep trying. I live nearby and take a final look-see with the wife at nine, then I’m outta here. Come nightfall, some hitchhike, get dropped off, slip into the bush. Kind of a dare. Can’t blame them. Harmless enough, romantic even.” He gave Chipper a “between us men” look.

      Holly opened her notebook, freshly inked and dated. Day One of My New In-Charge Career. Ben had collected what looked like thousands, neatly lined up in cabinets at home, to consult as backup to his court appearances. “Where will we find Angie?” She hoped she’d never become so hardened that bodies lost their identities. It was too late to help the girl, but the least she could do was serve her in the formalities of death.

      “Follow that path. Come out on the beach, then go right a couple hundred feet till you come to a big mother chunk of fir with roots halfway to the sky. I call it Butt.” As he read their faces, he gave a self-deprecating cough. “No offense. That’s a logging term for the bottom of the tree. Kids are always building driftwood shelters off old Butt. Just lay on boards or straight branches. They float out with each high tide. Butt’s dug in like a two-ton tick. It would take the mother of all storms to carry him away.”

      After grabbing a roll of yellow tape from the trunk, Chipper assumed a straight and serious posture which made him even taller. “Should we secure the scene, Corporal?”

      “Good idea. Last thing we want is to wade through a bunch of thrill seekers. A girl is dead here.” She told Tim to keep an eye out for Mason Boone, the coroner, though from Reg’s description, he would be hard to miss. Meanwhile, Tim folded his arms in vigilance as if he were participating in a crime show.

      The bright sun and warm temperatures made the beach an ideal destination, especially on a less-crowded weekday. Knotty shore pines bent from the ocean blasts, and swooping cypress shaded the area beneath the massive trunks of Douglas firs spared from the axe. They marched down the path with a “beach” sign, the gravel from the lot quickly turning into sand and duff. Halfway, a nearly new mountain bike lay on its side, unlocked and ready for the taking.

      “That’s a beauty, but the owner is an idiot,” Chipper said. “A camera was stolen from a car here last week.”

      “We’d better tell Tim. Maybe he can keep the bike safe at the gate until the owner returns. A cheap lesson.”

      In a cool, wet section heavy with deer fern and shiny, rampaging salal, Holly spotted a banana slug in the middle of the path. Seven inches long, it was a leopard, haute-couture cousin to the traditional army khaki model. She bent down and gently lifted the creature to safety. “I brake for detrivores,” she said.

      Chipper watched with a nostalgic smile. “In my survival course, we had to eat one of those. The wusses cooked it first. Once the...guts are out, a pinch of curry makes the difference. Everyone laughed. Then they all wanted some.”

      “You must carry an unusual kit.” With a disgusted moue, she inspected the slime on her hands. “I don’t know why I do this. Maybe I’m thinking I might be reincarnated as one, not that I’m a Buddhist, or is it Hindu?”

      “Whatever, I think the idea is to move up the ladder.”

      “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

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