loomed ahead, a billboard advertising the first major housing development west of Fossil Bay. To her left and right, great roads were being dozed into the woods or carved across former clear-cut hills. Million-dollar properties, especially on the oceanfront. Recent rulings by the Minister of Forests, with no consultation or conditions, had threatened to allow the timber companies to turn tens of thousands of hectares of lease land into lucrative real estate. Hit hard by a downturn in demand for timber products, the companies claimed that their debts could be settled better from immediate revenue, not wood scheduled to be cut in 2050. Mills were closing everywhere, from Nanaimo to Campbell River. Citizens and environmentalists fought back in public meetings, and surprisingly draconian zoning laws had temporarily halted the deals. Everyone knew that the battle had merely paused for breath. The boomers were on the move, especially from Ontario, and those not able to afford houses in costly Victoria wanted property. Moving vans went west and returned empty. Meanwhile, laid-off timber employees wondered if they should join the building trades.
The farther they drove, the paler Chipper looked. He took a hand off the wheel to rub his cheek. She noticed that he had left the music off. “Anything wrong?” Holly asked.
He shook his head like a wet dog. “Uh, I’ve never seen a body before.” He swallowed back his words as if to master a gag reflex. “Wish I hadn’t eaten such a big breakfast. Spicy food and stress don’t mix, but I couldn’t hurt Mom’s feelings.”
She smiled to herself. Even a few more years gave her the edge. It was the way of the force to pass on wisdom and experience. Not everyone made a good candidate. Ben Rogers, her old mentor, had been chosen for his intuition, coolness, talent for details and tact. He’d never use tasteless slang or refer to a victim as a “crispy critter” to draw a cheap laugh.
“There’s a first time for everyone,” Holly said. “Mine was pretty bad. The victim had been lying in a remote bush camp for a week in thirty degree Celsius temperatures. His wife sent us looking when he was days late returning from hunting. A pro told me to put Mentholatum in my nostrils.”
He reached into a storage compartment and pulled out a tube. “Cherry Lipsol. Do you think this will work?”
“It made me sneeze, and anyway, this girl...Angie just died.” She gave him a quick glance and sent a challenge she knew he couldn’t ignore. “You can stand to the side, Constable. No problem.” In public, Holly automatically reverted to rank instead of a first name, a tenet of professionalism. And calling civilians “you guys” was equally prohibited. “You’re not a waitress in a truck stop,” Ben had told her.
“No, Guv, I mean ma’am,” he said as his nostrils flared like a young stallion’s. “Count on me. I’ll be your right-hand man.”
A red hawk drifted on the thermals over the cliffs. She closed her eyes for a moment as the car streaked along at eighty kilometres per hour. A campfire last night, headed for a coffin in the morning. How large was the group, and how many other people were in the popular area, enjoying the scenery? Then she sent relaxation messages to her flexed stomach. It was an accident, nothing more. Over and out. Nervous this morning, she had breakfasted on only an apple. Now she felt slightly nauseous from the coffee.
“Careful: Winding Road,” the sign read. The island’s terrain was like an overlapping series of green, ribbed reptiles. Water flowed off the glaciated hills as quickly as it arrived. With only thirty more kilometres to Port Renfrew, the speed limit slowed to fifty on hairpin turns. Little opportunity to pass unless courting suicide. “Jeez,” Chipper said. “These bicycles.” They watched as five racers, their heads bent low, legs pumping like young locomotives, sped along in line. Technically they owned the lane, but sometimes they would shift over like a flock of birds if the berm was smooth. Holly wouldn’t have risked it. A small pebble under the skinny wheel might skew a rider under a tractor-trailer tire.
“Hit the siren and lights,” she said. “Polite isn’t cutting it.” He flicked switches with a grin. The teardrop-helmeted crew shot glances over their shoulders and moved aside smartly. Once past, the car moved in silence, Chipper with his strong hands at ten and two on the wheel.
Twenty minutes later, they reached the small town at the end of the line. There were only bush roads north to Fairy Lake, Lizard Lake, and massive Lake Cowichan from that point on. Fewer than two hundred white people lived here, with half as many First Nations members in the immediate area. Originally the Pacheedaht tribe had made their homes on the coast and throughout the San Juan Valley. Earliest contacts had been prickly between the locals and newcomers, starting in 1798, when the crew from HMS Iphigenia engaged the residents in a dispute. Though logging had waned and the railroad tracks had been replaced by a road, the old beach camp area was soon converted to houses. By lucky coincidence, Port Renfrew sat at the L-shaped confluence of the northerly West Coast Trail and the easterly Juan de Fuca Marine Trail, which ended at Botanical Beach. The beach had been recognized at the turn of the twentieth century as such a gold mine of tidal life that the University of Minnesota had set up a research station. Though that unit was long defunct, strict regulations applied to the pristine shoreline. PICO meant “pack in and carry out.”
Nor was the beach the only attraction. From her younger days camping and exploring, Holly knew that nearby a forest legend spread its roots, sucking up the twelve feet of rain. The largest Douglas fir tree in the world, the Red Creek fir, with a circumference of over forty-one feet, grew on the outskirts of town. Passing the tourist centre, modest restaurants, a motel and a quaint old inn, they took the turn for the beach. Minutes later, they reached the parking lot and pulled through the gate, guided by a man waving his arms. In his early sixties, in a tan park uniform with shorts and knee socks English style, he was probably retired and happy for the extra money in a part-time job. On a boom box in his battered camo-coloured Jeep, an oldies station was playing “Love Me Tender”. He sipped from a water bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as they got out of the car. Splotched cheeks testified to a long life of malt appreciation.
“I didn’t hear you guys coming. What happened to the siren?”
Holly shook her head. Expectations already. Around the lot were parked a dozen cars and an assortment of trucks, vans and campers, with visitors from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Washington. The pay-for-parking machine sold daily windshield tickets for three dollars. Sporadic attempts to break into the little coin banks were another reason for regular RCMP patrol, 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
