K Kapuskasing

M. Missing Person

Copies of the police records. My lawyer advised me to file them, just in case. There is the transcript of the first report, the one filed by the O.P.P.

The cop showed up at the planting camp to investigate a few hours after we called in Layla's disappearance. I sat with Graham, the camp manager, in his trailer as the cop rattled through a series of questions, most of them scripted. Did she have a boyfriend? Was she pregnant? Did we know of any outstanding debt? Was she an addict? Did she gamble? Rarely raising his head, he dutifully recorded every answer in his notebook. Then he closed his pad and said because less than twenty-four hours had passed since anyone saw her, she wasn't technically a missing person. He would need to come back tomorrow and begin a proper investigation.

The map of the search area-not that it was much of a search. We focused on the portion inside of the hand-drawn pink line on the green topo map, a bit east of the road. In all, we only examined a stretch of a few kilometres. The search team consisted of two O.P.P. cops, a pair of summer student auxiliary officers, and a few volunteers from the planting camp. Most of the crew didn't want to miss a day's earning from planting, so it was just Jill and me and two guys who had slept in and missed the bus. Layla wasn't a popular planter. We walked along the road looking for footprints, combed the bush in the area where I thought we camped, tracked through the underbrush looking for broken branches. Nothing. We spent most of the day searching but didn't find a sign of Layla. The lead officer, Corporal Donald Fletcher, was with me the whole time, asking me questions: how did I know her? Did we have a fight? He called off the search in time for the guys to make it back to Kap before their shift ended.

"Call me if you hear anything. Otherwise, we'll need to assume she made it out. If not, we'll come back when we see the crows circling." There is the card Donald Fletcher left me.

I was told I couldn't leave the area without informing the O.P.P. so I stayed around and finished the planting contract. I worked mindlessly for fifteen days straight, dawn to dusk: shovel in, foot down, pry back, bend over, pull plop, straighten shovel, step step, move on. The company pulled camp on July tenth, twenty days since I last saw Layla. There had been no circles of crows.

Officer Fletcher showed up at the camp the day before we were to leave and offered me a ride to town. Once in his car we turned south on the road Layla and I had walked, away from Kapuskasing. He stopped the cruiser just beyond the bend where I had flagged down the truck.

"Is this where you two were?" The cop looked straight at me.

"Yes, officer."

"And you are sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"Do you consider yourself good with directions, spatial things, like maps and Geography and stuff like that?"

"Pretty good."

He gave a huff, then silence. I looked down the road. All those logging roads looked the same.

"Then why did we find an empty Players cigarette pack in the bush at kilometre forty-seven, eight klicks south of here? We found the place where you spent the night with her, saw where you tried to light a fire."

I felt the bile from my stomach burning up to my chest, the fire of accusation.

"Rick Fortin took us directly to the spot, first time. I'm just wondering why you couldn't remember where you last saw your girlfriend."

I fumbled my words, then shrugged. "I don't know. I made a mistake I guess."

"I'd say you did. I want you to come to the station. We have some more questions for you."

There was a momentary twinge of relief knowing I might be considered a suspect, as though I was grateful we were closer to finding the answer to Layla's disappearance, regardless if the answer was false. And I felt pride in the public acknowledgement I was Layla's boyfriend. The cop said I was the last person to see her. Of course, that would make me the prime suspect, the one most likely responsible for her disappearance. They say most violence is perpetrated by someone close to the victim and I was honoured to be thought of this way, to be this close, so important. While I should have been shaking with fear, I felt relieved. I would accept my sentence like a penance, proudly. I had been Layla's boyfriend.

I was led to a small office with a desk on one wall and a chair for me in the corner. There was a camera in the opposite corner. I was told they would be recording everything, to help with their investigation. I asked if I was being arrested and Officer Fletcher said no, but told me I could call a lawyer if I wanted. I declined and he looked pleased.

Fletcher was a lifer. That is what planters referred to the old guys and girls on the crew who were tree planters for life, the ones who spend the winter ploughing laneways or riding courier bikes downtown or collecting pogey, then head back, year after year, to the only life they know in the North. I could tell Officer Fletcher was a lifer too. He was likely stationed in Kapuskasing as a rookie and for some reason felt a connection to the place. Unlike the young cops in the detachment, Fletcher couldn't leave, or couldn't go back. That happens to lifers. I knew he would understand my story.

"Great," Fletcher said when I declined to have a lawyer present, and he asked me to state my full name, date of birth, all that. We spoke for what seemed like hours and as the questioning proceeded, I felt more at ease with him. Gone was the sense I was being accused of hurting Layla. Fletcher spoke softly and smiled and put his hand on my knee once like he was suffering her loss too. "I know how you feel," he said a few times. He would look at me and ask, "Is there anything else?"

I wished I could have told him more.

He had me sign some forms, thanked me and left the room, leaving me alone for an hour. I assumed I was still under observation so I tried to behave like an innocent man. When the door finally opened, Fletcher told me I was free to go. He would appreciate it if I told them if I ever hear anything. That was it. Case closed.

Fletcher explained it like this: "We have been watching the bush around where you left her. MNR, fire planes, outfitters-no one has seen any crows or ravens feeding. Unless she sunk in a swamp, the birds would find her. We believe she walked out on you. Likely hitched a ride and is gone."

Next to the 'on you,' it was the 'gone' part was the hardest to take. He sounded so definitive, so final. I asked what he meant by 'gone.'

"Girls go missing up here. Some run away to the city, get hooked with a pimp, prostitution, drugs, you know. We hear about a few of them years later, but most are gone gone. Look, there are a million places where a guy can dump a girl's body and it will never be found. Walk off any bush road or trail and you are as good as gone."

"What about the crows? You said they show you where a body is."

"Only if we are looking in a specific area. We don't watch all the bush, investigate every animal kill."

Gone too was the shared grief. Fletcher now spoke in a matter-of-fact, business-as-usual manner. But he didn't know Layla. She wasn't running away, she was running to. Any creep who picked her up would more likely become her accomplice. Layla couldn't be gone, dumped in the bush.

"If her family wanted to keep searching, they could. Post signs, coordinate volunteers, talk to the media. The O.P.P. would help, of course, but there isn't much we can do unless new information emerges. But I don't believe she had much family around. Plus, she seemed to be a bit of a troublemaker-from what we know of her."

I must have looked surprised. He added, "Protests on campus, marches, that kind of thing. You know she was arrested during the illegal road blockade in Temagami, don't you?"

The Layla I knew? Possibly. I have since found a photo of the Red Squirrel Road blockade near Temagami. There she is, in the back, behind those people with signs, part of the group surrounding the tree harvester. The police are closing in, the protesters' arms are in the air. Native elders are holding hands. Fires are burning. Layla looks proud.