Why Not Murder

10. Cell

10. Cell

The following morning before dawn Maya went for her walk along the shoreline. Long streaks of red, pink and purple reflected off the underbellies of the low clouds and on the upper tips of all the little waves bobbing on the lake's surface. The breeze was very slight. Might rain later, Maya thought, enjoying the pure air as she breathed it in with appetite. The population of crayfish was exploding and Maya was snatching them with her fingers, expertly sneaking her hand up behind them and then nimbly grasping the body shell. She popped them into a large plastic bottle carried in her shoulder bag and would have them later when she returned home.

When she reached the scene of the accident she stopped and reflected on what had happened there. The car had been removed and impounded. Had Wyler, who she thought of as Warren when she found the driver's license in his pocket, died as a result of the fall? If not, a person or persons had pushed him over after he was already incapacitated or dead. What would the coroner have determined, death by accident or murder, had she not taken the body away? Why had she done that? Remembering it now, she couldn't see any logic to her actions, except she remembered feeling there was a chance he could still be alive. The will and stamina to remove Wyler had been hers, but she couldn't own it, but neither did she at all regret it, knowing things happen for a reason and this was another example of her inner guide acting in spite of her, conscious Maya not knowing the reason why. By now, so much rain had fallen that looking for skid marks which may have been formed if the car had swerved off the dirt road would be futile.

What about Kyle Rogers, the identity determined from the finger print of the bear victim? Who was he? Why was this man using so many different identities? Were the police investigating that?

Maya was still watching for crayfish when she noticed a flickering in the shallow water amongst the shiny, colourful stones. She moved some of the stones and pulled out the object. It was a cell phone. Stunned over her find, questioning why the police who had been here had not found it, she wondered whose it was. She dried it off and took it with her. She searched as methodically as she could to see if there was anything else of interest. After awhile and she hadn't found anything more, she headed home. She had walked here many times and had never noticed the cell phone before, now she had seen it probably because she was crayfish hunting.

After a tasty meal, Maya gathered some provisions in her bag and went back to town with the cell phone to look up an old friend of hers she hadn't seen for some time. As Maya walked, dark rain clouds gathered. About one hundred meters from the town boundary on the poor side of town there was a tiny house at least two centuries old. No other houses were near it. The house had been built for a prospering pioneer and when he saw it for the first time, the error in the house design glared. He had provided construction plans to the builders instructing them to follow the plans exactly or they would not be paid. However the scale of the plan was off and the resulting house was far too small for the pioneer and his family to live in. The builders were not paid for that construction, but they did construct another house, using the same plan, but with the scale corrected. It was built on the opposite side of the pioneer's expansive property and the builders were paid well when the job was complete. The tiny house was allowed to weather and age naturally. The original property was subdivided many times and now the house made with the corrected scale is located well within the town.

A large area around the tiny house was surrounded with a high, strong wire fence. The fence ran on either side of the front pathway leading to the covered front porch so that although dogs would be fiercely barking, they would be on the other side of the fence from anyone approaching. A sign was attached to the front door. "Angry Dog Electronic Repair" it said.

Angry Dog, also known as Dog-In-Chains, Dog for short, greeted Maya with warmth and they gave each other a good long hug. At this the watch dogs stopped their barks and growls and wagged their tails, knowing now that Maya was someone their master truly cared about and so was effectively one of the pack. Maya and Dog were weeping on each other's shoulders. Heavy rain started. Seeing each other brought back the horrible rage and grief they had both experienced at the hands of the fuel company back in the day when they lived on the same ancestral land. This was the first time seeing each other since the oil flooded the cemetery where their families were buried. Both became aware that most of their healing was still to be done if it ever could.