A Dream of Death (7 page)

“Detective,” he said at one point, “I think we have cause of
death.”

I knelt next to the site to find that the dirt had been
cleared from the rib cage. One rib on the left side of the body was missing and
the rib above it had been cut through mere centimetres from the sternum.
Exactly the same wounds I had seen in my dream.

A surge of adrenaline brought me to my knees. My stomach
heaved and I rose against my will, then ran as fast and as far as I could
before vomiting on the damp ground. The trees spun around me, twirling in a
chaotic dance as my head reeled in pain and I choked on the remnants of my
breakfast. I was on my knees again, staring at my loss of control, when I felt
the faint touch of a hand on my shoulder.

“Link?”

“I’m fine, Chen. I’m fine.”

He tightened his grip.

“Just give me a minute, Chen.”

He removed his hand. Light and cautious steps echoed like
thunder in my ears as Chen backed away, leaving me to myself.

A few minutes later the nausea had subsided and the throbbing
in my ears had faded to little more than a dull drumming. I stood up, brushed
the dirt and leaves off of my formerly clean suit and returned to the crime
scene.

“Must be the heat,” I said, lying through my foul-smelling
teeth. “You have any gum, Chen?”

“Sure.” He handed me a pack. “Have a few pieces, for our
sake.”

I forced a smile and turned back to Dr. Conroy. I was just
about to ask him to tell me what he had found when Chen interrupted.

“Hey, Link? You sure it’s the heat? I mean, hell, aren’t
your ancestors from the Congo?”

“Only on my father’s side Chen. My mother is Irish and hates
the heat. Can we get on with this?” Sometimes having detectives for friends
makes having friends difficult.

Conroy went back to business, saving me from Chen’s interrogation.
“Parts of the skeleton have shifted over time, you’ll see some parts are higher
than others. The skull was the highest point. See here, beneath the skeleton?”

“A tree root?” The root was thicker than my arm and ran the
full length of the skeleton.

“Looks like that might have helped push the body to the
surface.”

Conroy was looking straight at me now as if Chen were no
longer there. “It would take a sharp knife and a lot of force to make this
cut.” Conroy pointed to the severed rib. “It’s a clean cut, and although it’s
too early to say for certain, it’s just above where the heart would have been.
Cause of death may have been a knife wound to the chest.”

A hunting knife, wooden handled with a silver blade. That
would be the murder weapon.

“We’ll find the missing rib fragments as we dig further.
Based on what I can see here, dimensions of the pelvis and the size and shape
of the skull, I would say we’re looking at a Caucasian male, in his thirties.
The wisdom teeth have fully erupted and there is significant wear on them. I
should be able to narrow down the age after the bones have been removed and I
make it to the morgue. I’ll take some soil samples from under the body as well.
Once I’ve done the postmortem I’ll send a bone off to CFS for a DNA profile.”

“Thanks, doctor,” I said as I took my leave feeling more
hindrance than help. CFS, The Centre for Forensic Sciences, was located in
Toronto and was where police services sent evidence to be analyzed. They were
capable of performing DNA matches, analyzing blood samples for drugs or
alcohol, and performing a vast number of other tasks as required.

“Can you send the damaged ribs as well? They might be able
to get to work identifying the weapon.” Conroy looked at me and nodded.

The excavation had gone well. Two thirds of the area had
been dug out to a depth of fifteen centimeters. It was unlikely that the
murderer would have buried the body in one place and evidence in another. The
purpose of searching the area surrounding the body was to attempt to locate anything
that may have been discarded by the killer or belonged to the victim and had
been buried under years of leaf litter.

Conroy had been right—the rib fragments were at the bottom
of the grave, resting on the undamaged ribs. His cause of death was looking
accurate; the bones had been cut leaving a smooth edge on either side. Forensic
analysis once the skeleton had been removed would assist in determining the
weapon used.

There were no other visible injuries on the skeleton to
account for cause of death. There were healed breaks on the right femur, left
ulna and the index finger and middle finger on the right hand. The victim
apparently lived a rough life, and medical records might help identify him.

We broke for the night, the skeleton removed by the coroner,
who was less than happy to make the trip. The skeleton would be in the morgue
by sundown, the students dosing up on Robaxacet, and Chen and I enjoying a beer
or two since the scotch had disappeared the previous night.

Chen promised me that we would be done by noon tomorrow and
I would be flying back into London, ready to work the following day. Kara had
sent me a few text messages with nothing new to add. She had been following up
on the possibility of a police cadet being the culprit but with four hundred
students at the police college (nearly three hundred males) it was not an easy
task.

It was late by the time I made it back to the hotel room. I
only hoped that Kat hadn’t decided to put the kids to bed early. The phone rang
only twice before I got my answer.

“Daddy,” Kasia said.

“Hey, honey. How was your day?”

“Good. We went outside for gym class and played on the
climbers. It was fun.”

I smiled. “That’s awesome. Are you guys getting ready for
bed?”

“Yep. Mommy’s just going to read to us. Link wants to talk
to you. Bye.”

I didn’t even have time to say bye back before Link was on
the phone.

“Guess what?”

“What, buddy?”

“I got two goals in soccer today.”

I beamed. “Nice work.” He had been practicing hard lately
and it had obviously paid off. “I’m proud of you.”

“Gotta go, mommy wants the phone. Bye, Daddy.”

Again, off the phone before I could respond.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Kat. Good day?”

“Not bad, yourself?”

“Hectic and hot. We should be done fairly early tomorrow,
then I’ll be on my way home.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

Never underestimate a woman’s intuition. I hadn’t had the
chance to tell her why I needed to go. I guess the details of my dreams that I
had filled her in on were enough for her to figure it out.

“Not yet, but there has to be a connection. Why else would I
be having these dreams? Everything is coming true. I think I’m remembering…” I
hesitated, unable to say it for what it could mean. “…something.”

“Well, hurry home. I’ll see you tomorrow. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

I hung up the phone and put my head in my hands. My next
call was to Chen’s room to cancel on the beers. I was asleep by ten that night,
exhausted both physically and mentally.

There would be no sound sleeping tonight, of that I was
certain.

I enter hell once again and stand alone in the middle of the
partially excavated crime scene. The skeleton still lies, unmoving, in the
ground. I walk around the area, searching for… something, anything. There’s
nothing. The knife is absent and the skull is free of blood. My body aches,
duller than before but enough to remind me of the pain I had suffered on my
previous visits.

I sit down in the dirt beside the skeleton hoping for
another message. I am in control, I choose where I go and what I do. I have
never had a dream like this.

This time I want to stay.

I walk through my subconscious and dig through memories long
since buried. The skull bears no messages, no writing in blood. A knife
flashing the word ‘truth,’ a skull asking the question ‘why.’ I try to
understand the messages. The victim asks why and the knife will lead me to the
truth.

I look at my surroundings and can’t shake the thought that I
have been here before. The area is so familiar, the trees and the river
recognizable. I know of no way to prove that my reality and my dreams are one
in the same.

Birds chirp overhead and insects fill the breaks with their
own music. I sit on the ground, damp to the touch yet leaving me dry. The
rushing river and wind in the leaves provide the backing vocals to nature’s
orchestra. Peaceful, serene, I revel in a dream that has not left me battered
and broken.

My quiet reflection is shattered as the day turns to night.
A full moon high in the sky brightens the world around me. Screams echo through
the trees, two men. Their voices are raised, a muffled argument. One voice is
filled with hatred and fear, the other with pure, unbridled rage. I close my
eyes and focus to locate the source through the dark.

A branch breaks beside me and I open my eyes. The men are
fighting now, a vicious tangle of limbs flailing around on the ground. I see no
faces, make out no features—just two silhouettes in a darkened night.

All of the pain comes rushing back and I can’t move, my mind
slips away and I lose consciousness.

The morning light breaks through the trees when I come to, a
mound of disturbed dirt to my right and one of the men standing to my left.
Pain distorts my vision and all I see is the blurred shape of a person, tall
and well-built. My eyes close against my will and I force myself to keep them
open, squinting to see the man in front of me.

He leans down and runs his fingers through my hair before I
black out again.

I awoke with more questions than answers. Mysterious men, a
fight that led to the death and burial of one of them and an unknown victor.
There was no stopping the onslaught of images and thoughts that ran through my
mind.

I sat up and eased my way out of bed, my left arm throbbing
between my wrist and elbow. I couldn’t move it and it dangled uselessly at my
side. The pain reminded me of the only bone I had ever broken, my left ulna at
the age of eight.

Of course. How stupid.

It had been on the camping trip with my father that I had
broken my arm and suffered numerous other injuries. A tumble down a rocky
embankment left me remembering nothing of what had happened before the fall to
a while after. “Amnesia,” the doctors had told my father. “Common following
major trauma. He should regain most of the memories eventually.”

I never had, and a thought of that accident hadn’t crossed
my mind in years. I had been eight years old and in a cast—my only worry was
trying to hang out with friends who didn’t know what do with me. I couldn’t
swim, play ball or ride a bike. The majority of the summer was spent on the
couch watching reruns of cartoons and waiting for my bone to mend.

The pieces were beginning to turn over, parts of the picture
being revealed while the rest sat blank—brown cardboard backings staring back
at me, waiting for me to flip them over and piece them together.

If only there was someone left who could help me. My mother
had passed away two years ago after losing her battle with cancer. My father
was still alive though only in body. His mind was gone, the advanced stages of
Alzheimer’s taking everything from him. Thinking of my father filled me with
guilt. It had been more than a year since I’d visited him, and it was only as
an afterthought that I thought of him anymore. The man I knew had been gone so
long he didn’t even know his wife had died.

When he had first gone into the nursing home, I had traveled
home to Chatham once a week to see him. The visits became less and less
frequent as his condition worsened and he began to lose track of my identity. I
could be an orderly or a nurse, the cable repairman, a phone technician, a
cleaner or a plumber, a priest or a doctor but I was no longer his son to him.
He had forgotten me and I, with no excuse other than my own weakness, had
forgotten him.

A knock at the door of my hotel room reminded me I had no
time to dwell on the past. Chen was waiting for me and before long we pulled up
at the scene, the doctor and eight of his students at the ready.

“Sorry about the turnout, boys,” Conroy said. “Two had prior
engagements and the other two, well, I don’t think they’re cut out for field
work.”

“No worries, doc,” Chen said. “We don’t have much left to
do.”

Less than a half an hour after our arrival, the team was
already hard at work. I excused myself from the scene to take a look at the
rest of the surroundings. Following the sound of the river took me to its
banks. My reflection shimmered in the water. My left arm still hung by my
side—I had managed to hide this from Chen but it glared back at me now, a
testament to the power of the mind and the weakness of the body. I walked along
the river, followed its path as it wound through the trees and stepped
carefully on the loose, mist-sprayed rocks.

Fish danced on the surface as the water broke and swirled
into eddies at my feet. I had to fight the urge to dive in. The temperature was
climbing again and the moisture that hung in the air told me that this would be
another stifling day. I knelt down and dipped my right hand into the water,
cupping as much of the cool liquid as a single hand could hold. My hand met my
mouth and I drank of the freshest water I had ever tasted, spring water taken
right from the source. With my eyes closed it seemed easier to savour the taste
as the water rolled down the inside of my throat. My eyes were still closed as
I dipped my hand into the water and drank again, then a third time.

I opened my eyes and stood up. My hand was chilled, cold
drops of water cascaded onto the rocks below. I shook my hand and the water
that escaped turned crimson.

I closed my eyes again and tried to will the hallucination
away, forcing myself to realize that it could not be real.

I took a deep breath and was once again ready to face my
fears. The blood was gone and a man stood on my left. Did he really exist? He
had to be at least sixty-five although he could have passed for older. It took
a minute to notice his clothing—a park ranger.

“Sorry if I startled you,” he said. He had a country voice,
groomed by being raised on the farm listening to western music on the radio.
“I’ve been watching you boys, watching you dig.” He must have sensed my
apprehension. “Not like that, boy, I’m no creeper. I always wanted to be a cop,
but in my day, well, let’s just say I fell short of the standard.”

I hadn’t noticed his height until I looked down and saw that
he was standing on a rock about half a foot taller than mine. The OPP and other
police services used to have height requirements, something which had fallen by
the wayside many years ago.

“It’s interesting what you’re doing, of course you’re tearing
up my park to do it.” A smile formed, his lips parted and revealed a set of
dentures. “Do you know, is it an adult or a child?”

I wasn’t sure if I should answer him, that information was
confidential and a major part of the investigation. But something about this
old man set my mind at ease. “A man, in his thirties. He’s been there a while.”

“I wonder if it’ll be William Jeffries then.”

My ears perked up at the mention of a name to attach to the
body. I took a step closer.

“It would have been the summer of eighty-four, end of June
or beginning of July,” he said. “I hadn’t been working here too long at that
point. A woman called us—his mother I want to say—saying that he was three days
overdue from his camping trip. We knew the area where he’d been staying, I’d asked
him as he passed through.”

I nodded for him to continue.

“Another ranger and I went looking for him, found his tent
still set up but couldn’t find any sign of him. We called the police and they
did a missing persons report. Never found him, but that isn’t rare.” He looked
around as if wanting my gaze to follow his, nods cast in the direction of the
various dangers of the terrain. “People walk off, get lost, get injured. We’ve
even had a few come up here to kill themselves. The next summer a woman got attacked
by a bear in this same area, she barely survived. I shot it a few days later.
Everyone thought Jeffries had been killed by the bear.”

“Any other missing people that stand out?”

“None that would fit the bill.” He paused for a moment,
“There were two boys went missing a few years before, not far from here. Both
of them wandered off from their campsites in the night. The parents found some
of their clothes by the river. It can get pretty hot here, and sleeping in a
tent isn’t something a lot of these kids are used to. I figure they went down
to the river to cool off, maybe went in, maybe fell in accidentally while
dangling their toes in the water.”

“Did anyone ever find their bodies?”

“Not that I know of, but this river runs for miles and it
can get going pretty fast. Drains out into a small lake too. Everything’s
connected in here, if they fell in who knows where they’d end up.”

“Come take a closer look at what’s going on, just stay
outside of the gridlines.”

His eyes lit up like a child at Christmas morning. “Thanks,
detective.”

“Lincoln.” I held out my hand.

He took it with a grasp surprisingly firm for the frailty of
his body. “Lesley Johnson, nice meeting you.”

“You too.” We walked back toward the scene as I attempted to
work some life back into my left arm. Chen looked surprised to see me return
with company, but Lesley made short work of that, introducing himself to Chen
and waving to Dr. Conroy.

“An enthusiast,” I told Chen. “And he might have an ID on
our skeleton, a missing person from eighty-four.”

“William Jeffries,” Lesley said. “Had his camp not far from
here when he disappeared.”

“People thought a bear had gotten him after a woman was
attacked in this area the summer after,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t a bear,
unless Yogi learned how to shovel.” Only Chen laughed.

Chen thanked Lesley for the information. “I’ll get on the
phone to the detachment, have them start pulling records. Maybe we’ll get lucky
and have some dentals on file for this Jeffries guy.”

Chen made his way back to the SUV and I left Lesley to watch
the dig, a vicarious yearning for a dream gone by. I walked around the
perimeter of the grid myself. The students were hard at work digging out the
last of the marked squares of dirt, and so far had brought nothing to our
attention.

I weaved through the trees, last year’s leaves crumpled
under my feet. A gnarled tree stood tall in front of me, a twisted trunk and
ragged branches jutting off in all directions. The roots rose out of the ground
and dove back under, crossing over each other and growing together.

A glimmer of light caught my eye from underneath one of the
roots, something hiding in the darkness.

Instinct drove me at this point. Whatever it was it had to
be important, but was it more important to me or to the crime scene? I reached
into my pocket—my left arm suddenly working again—and removed a quarter, then
knelt down into the dirt. The root scratched against the back of my hand as my
fingers wrapped around the object. I slid the coin into the dirt and rubbed it
to make it dirty. I held the unknown object between my fingertips then tucked
it into the sleeve of my jacket.

“What did you find?” A voice hollered in my direction, “or
did your breakfast come up again?”

Now I knew why I had hidden the item. I raised the coin to
my eye and answered Chen, “just a quarter, two-thousand-and-six. Definitely not
related. Oh, and piss off.”

“Roger on both counts,” Chen said, but kept walking toward
me.

I bladed my body, and hid my right side from Chen. With a
slight motion the object dropped from my sleeve into my pants pocket.

Chen talked as he closed the gap between us. “I didn’t get
much information yet, the missing persons record is still on file. Not much
else on this Jeffries guy though. We’ll have to wait and see if Conroy or the
coroner can make an ID. I have them checking for dentals. If not, maybe we can
get some DNA and compare it to any living relatives.”

“If that’s our guy.”

“Always the optimist, Link.”

Chen stayed close to me for the remaining hour of the dig,
then we drove back to the hotel together. There had been no chance to inspect
the object, even answering the call of nature in the woods had prompted Chen to
say he had to go as well, and for whatever reason men see to urinate
side-by-side, he had decided to tag along. At least women’s bathrooms had separate
stalls.

My fingers had traced the outline of the object through my
pants numerous times, and left the inside of my pocket lined with dirt. The
shape was clear—a watch with a broken metal band. Knowing what it was didn’t
make it better—I needed to see it, to inspect it.

Patience was a virtue I lacked in droves.