LITMIR.BIZ

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heart.” He scanned his light about, into the flashing rain, the woods, the undergrowth as far as the rays could reach, then along the path down which Rosetti must have come rushing before his collapse. “So where’s this famous pack?”

      He and Dion climbed some distance farther before they found the first piece of evidence, a small bulk picked up in the light beam, bright red. A bloody hunk of meat, Dion thought, shocked enough to gasp — until he saw it was not organic, but man-made. Not a carcass, and not a pack either, but a heap of red material. A man’s hiking jacket. Up around the curve of the path lay the black nylon pack itself. Like the jacket, it looked brand new. In the dirt nearby, Dion found a small silver item. “Camera,” he called out.

      “Really?” Randall said. “Don’t,” he added sharply, as Dion bent to pick it up. “Take pictures of all this stuff in situ. Okay? Just in case.”

      “God,” Dion said. He used his own camera to take shots of the three items where they lay, bright white flashes pricking the night, then picked up the dead man’s camera by its strap and dropped it into one of the exhibit bags tucked in his utility belt. He stuck the thing in his jacket pocket, to be sealed and labelled back at the cruiser.

      Now that they had what they were looking for, they would get going, he hoped, out of the wilds and back down to civilization. He watched the leafy underbrush swell and shudder on either side. Even armed, and even in the presence of another man who was also armed, the woods made him nervous. There were carnivores here on the upper reaches of the North Shore. Bears, for sure. Cougars weren’t unheard of.

      “How far d’you reckon we walked from the body?” Randall asked, chipper and sharp. He sounded young, almost girlish, like a teenaged boy whose voice had not yet broken. He stood looking down the path they had just climbed, gauging distance with his eyes.

      Dion looked downhill, too. “A long way.”

      “Over a kilometre,” Randall said. “What d’you think, my friend?” Without warning and without waiting for an answer he shut off his light, and the darkness was abruptly all over them, blacker than black. Dion stared at where Randall must still be standing, and Randall’s voice hissed, “Listen.”

      Dion tightened his fist on his unlit penlight and listened. His eyes adjusted, and his partner became visible to him: a ghostly glimmer, pinpricks of light marking the prescription lenses. He could hear what Randall was maybe wanting him to hear, what he had heard all along, now amplified by the darkness: the living rainforest. The ruckus. Creaking, whispering, pattering. Something moaned.

      “Would be kind of scary if you were alone, hey?” Randall said.

      “Sure.”

      “There would have been daylight still when Rosetti was here. But getting dim. What was he running from?”

      “Rain in the forecast, maybe. Let’s have some light.”

      “Rain?” Randall’s laugh was a startling blast of gaiety in the darkness. “Get real. If he was scared of rain, he would put on his jacket, not drop it.”

      “An animal, then. Or his imagination.”

      “What animal? If something was in hot pursuit, it would have caught up.”

      “Imagination,” Dion said, losing patience. “Saw a bear or a cougar, or thought he saw one. Ran like hell. Who wouldn’t?”

      Unlike Dion, Randall was enjoying the debate. “Ran too far for an imaginary fear,” he said. “He’s not an experienced hiker, but he’s not green, either. If he saw an animal, he may have run, sure, or walked very fast for a while. But he would have realized soon enough that whatever it was, it was not coming after him. Natural human pride would have kicked in, if nothing else, and he would have slowed down. Right?”

      Dion took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

      “Made noise, waved his arms, took precautions,” Randall continued. “Instead he ditched his belongings and ran for his life. Ran so hard his heart gave out.”

      “So he got tired. Stopped to take a break. Felt something wrong with his heart, got scared, took off trying to get back to the parking lot before he went into cardiac arrest.” Dion switched his light on, to show he was done. “Obviously he didn’t make it. Let’s go.”

      He bent to gather the backpack, then the jacket, and started down the path, with or without Randall and the powerful light beam he had finally switched back on. Randall didn’t follow immediately — fussing with rocks, by the sound of it, marking the spot — but soon joined him to continue the argument.

      “Sure, feeling chest pain would have worried him, made him rush. But to drop everything and flee? Because that’s what it feels like to me, like he was fleeing something.”

      Dion knew that if he let every what-if bother him, little would ever get done. He said nothing.

      “It’s that distance,” Randall said. “A kilometre? How far can you run after a stroke? Think you can run a kilometre?”

      Dion was thinking about the 9 mm at his side, about using it on Randall, when Randall stopped in his tracks. The light from his torch swung wildly into the trees as he reached out. “Hey, the camera! Let’s see what’s on it.”

      The darkness pressed at Dion’s back and the rain hammered his cap. Whatever had pursued Rosetti was still out there, and it was high time to get out of this wilderness. “No chance. The water would have killed it.”

      “Won’t know till we try, will we?”

      Dion dug out the camera and handed it to Randall, who blotted the thing dry with a tissue, then pushed the review button. His round, pale face was lit greenish by the little screen — it wasn’t dead after all. Dion forgot the shadows at his back and stepped closer, watching Randall for reaction.

      “Tourist shots,” Randall said, disappointed.

      Dion took the camera, shielded it from the rain with a hand, and had a look. The last few photos were stock snapshots — quite nice, actually — the long rays of a dying day shooting between cedar trunks and lighting up endless miles of bush, and a patch of what looked like devil’s club — leaves the size of manhole covers, yellowed now by winter, hiding their razor spikes. Pretty in a forest setting, but armed to the teeth.

      He grinned at Randall. “What did you expect, monsters?”

      “Would have been nice,” Randall admitted.

      * * *

      “’Scuse me, nature calls.” Randall parted ways with Dion in the corridor to head toward the staff washrooms. Dion watched him push at the wrong door, the one clearly marked female. Tempted to say nothing, but pleased the little go-getter wasn’t perfect, he called out a warning. “Hey, Jack. You’re not a lady.”

      Randall’s response shocked him. “It’s Jackie, not Jack. And yes, I am.”

      He disappeared into the ladies’ room. She, not he. The door closed behind her.

      Dion stared at the door. Presumption had built on presumption. He had misheard Randall introduce herself as Jack. Between her bulky uniform, her low cap brim, and poor lighting, Jack she had remained to him, a man, short and shrill. Now that she was Jackie, she was so clearly female that he burned with embarrassment. Well, at least she’d have a good guffaw with her buddies tonight.

      In the big picture, it didn’t matter. It was just laughter. If being laughed at was going to be his worst problem on the job, then he was one lucky cop who was apparently getting away with murder. He dropped into his chair before his computer, switched on the screen, and got on with his plan of being a good man for the rest of his life.

      Two

       THE WOLF

      DIARY ENTRY OF STEFANO BOONE — OCTOBER 23:

       Humans are such mad deluded creatures all tiny whirring particles

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