Why Not Murder

1. Body Found

WHY NOT MURDER

By Jacquie Allen

1. Body Found

Maya was walking slowly, following the stony shore line, the vast lake to her left, the narrow pebbly beach and awesomely tall cliffs to her right. The air was still. Tiny waves lapped her sandaled feet. The water and wet stones glistened in the golden sunlight. It was moments after dawn and there was not a cloud in the sky. Birds nesting in the cliffs chattered incessantly. Maya's long black hair was braided down her back, tucked inside a loose dark brown warm jacket. She also wore a brown loose dress that went almost down to her ankles, black loose pants, a light wooly toque and scarf the same blue colour as her eyes. Her skin was dark, unadorned, without any jewelry except for good luck bracelets made with small plastic beads. Her face had an indigenous look and was well proportioned that naturally put others at ease in her presence. She was tall, lean and surprisingly strong.

She was not purposely thinking, that is, not thinking about anything particular, just experiencing the tumble of images, words and music characteristic of nonreflective daydreams. Her eyes were focused on where she was stepping. This was her customary morning walk - weather and circumstances permitting. Many days the wind was too fierce and the waves too high, pounding the cliffs with a force that could shatter her bones to bits. On those days Maya would walk in the forest where the old trees and young shrubs would provide shelter. Wherever she took her morning walk, she would head out for about an hour and a half and then return by the same route. She lived in a one room wood cabin that had a central fireplace and stone chimney, surrounded on all exterior sides by a screened porch. Each wall had many tall, narrow windows close together, enabling her to see out in every direction. There wasn't another building around for miles.

She lived alone. It was some months now that she had left her job in the city with all that associated stress and came to live out here. She didn't have a vehicle but did have a canoe and would do her shopping at most once a month with that. Nearly all of her diet consisted of fish, crayfish, eggs, wild ground birds, plants and berries. Sculptures carved by her, in dead tree trucks, randomly populated the area around her home. She never felt lonely and was ever cognizant of an omnipresent spirit in all that surrounded her. For Maya, all things had spirit, not exactly like hers because all things are unique, but all things, such as stones, plants, animals, the earth, the sky, stars, water, to name a few. She believed all things shared in the singularity of consciousness, but each thing experiences a different consciousness of self, depending on what it is. She keenly felt in this presence of another, which she was also aware permeated the realm of her own private mind, and would make suggestions that would arise in her awareness.

She made her way carefully around a portion of the cliff that jutted out into the lake. Here the rocks and stones were larger and some were sharply pointed. The water was deeper. Then she froze at the sight of a car half sunk in the lake, wedged between boulders. The front part was underwater, the back part in the air. It looked like it had nose-dived in. Someone seemed to be inside. She quickly got to the vehicle, her feet slipping on slimy rocks. There was someone behind the steering wheel mostly under water. She tried to open the driver-side door but it was stuck closed. The door on the passenger side was partially open. She pulled at it and leaned inside. The driver was still. His seatbelt was undone and she carefully pulled him out. His face had been above water and there was a huge bruise on his forehead. She laid him down on the stony beach as evenly as she could. From the way his head was hanging, she knew his neck was broken. His back was compressed and broken as well. His left arm was dislocated from the shoulder and the upper arm bone had punctured through the skin of his back and shirt, pushing his shoulder blades out of place. He was quite dead. Maya thought he had probably driven over the cliff the night before because he and the car had not been there yesterday when she came by. It was an extremely dangerous road, even for those who knew it well, especially in the dark.