“Here is where we found the body,” one of the men said, pointing at a recently-disturbed area of ice. Bob already knew from photos that Duncan had been found on the ski slope, but he was still astonished by the location—dead center, about 25 meters east of the tow-lift. Through all that searching, he’d been right under their noses. Bob remembered taking a photograph of Lynda six years earlier on the walking path, just a few meters from where Duncan had been laying in the ice.
He studied the area that had been his son’s grave, and noticed a few fragments of clothing and a piece of black plastic. He picked up the plastic and saw that it was a section of the snowboard deck on which the serial number was stamped. It appeared that someone had detached it from the board and tossed it into the remnant of the shallow crevasse from which Duncan’s body had been extracted, but because the ice continued to melt in the days that followed, the piece of plastic had reemerged on the surface. Bob showed it to one of the slope workers, and then put it into his pocket. The worker produced a cell phone, called someone, and spoke in German.
Bob continued to study the site, and saw, among the chunks of disturbed ice, some whitish-grey fragments. He bent down and picked up what appeared to be wrist bones and pieces of a hand. They had marks on them, as though something had struck them.
“What’s that?” Lynda asked as he wrapped them in his handkerchief.
“Looks like bones,” he said. She was speechless. Why hadn’t the police collected all of Duncan’s body? It wasn’t so much rage she felt as disbelief. And even though it was a hot day, she felt that there was something terribly cold about the place.
“I want to get away from here,” she told her husband.
From the glacier, they drove to Dr. Rabl’s office to give him the bones.
“I want to apologize to you, and especially to Duncan, for the way the authorities have handled this,” he said with tears in his eyes.
“They look kind of smashed up,” Bob said. “Do you think it happened when the body was extracted?” Rabl studied them.
“No,” he said. “See how the fractures are dark. Fresh fractures would be lighter. I will put them with the rest of the body. We are going to CT scan it this evening, and I will have the results for you tomorrow.”
The next day (August 1) they returned to Rabl’s office to hear the results. To save them from having to find a parking space in the congested neighborhood, the doctor came down and let them into the staff lot. He then explained that, according to his colleague in radiology, the scan showed no fractures to the skull, thorax, or pelvis, indicating that Duncan had not died from any kind of severe injury. He had not yet received copies of the images and report, but as soon as he did, he would send them to the MacPhersons’ home in Saskatoon.
“While we’re here,” Lynda said, “can we get copies of your ID report and those photos you showed us to prepare us for viewing the body?”
“The ID report is for Knapp, and I’m not really supposed to give it to you,” he said. “But I personally don’t see any reason why you can’t have it.” He made her a copy, and also gave her the two photos.
From Dr. Rabl’s description of the CT scan, Lynda and Bob concluded that Duncan must have indeed died from being buried in a crevasse by a careless groomer. As the examination had, according to Dr. Rabl, revealed nothing that warranted further investigation, they figured they might as well give the green light for cremation. Rabl said the body would go to the crematorium that day, and that the ashes would be ready to pick up the following Monday.
Just before they left the office, Bob remembered the snowboard serial number he’d found on the glacier the day before, and he told Rabl about it. The doctor volunteered to trace the board for them, and accompanied them to the parking lot, where Bob got the objects out of the car and laid them on the pavement for Rabl to photograph them.
It was a sunny day, and in the direct light, Bob noticed for the first time that whatever instrument had sliced off the board’s plastic deck had left a residue of red paint on the underlying plywood. He’d just seen that color the day before—it was the color of the rotating mechanism on a grooming machine that pulverizes hard-packed snow.
“It looks like the board got hit by a grooming tiller,” he said to Rabl. This was puzzling because, as Bob had just learned from their trip to the Stubai Glacier, the resort had been closed for skiing all summer due to lack of snow. Though the maintenance workers were still using Snowcats for transport, they weren’t grooming. Rabl said he would follow-up with the workers about how exactly they’d extracted the board.
As they were taking their leave, Lynda gave Rabl a fine bottle of Canadian whiskey.
“Something to remember us by,” she said.
“We are so thankful that the last person to handle Duncan was a man of such integrity,” Bob added.
The day before they returned to Saskatoon, they went to the crematorium near the Innsbruck Olympic Stadium to pick up Duncan’s remains. As a gift, the undertaker placed the sealed plastic container of ashes in a bronze-colored steel urn that looked rather like a bucket for chilling champagne. A small metal plaque on the urn was inscribed:
Krematorium Innsbruck No. 003863
Duncan MACPHERSON
Geb [Born]: 03.02.1966
Gest:[Died] 18.07.2003
Krem.:[Cremated] 04.08.2003
Lynda was touched by the undertaker’s gesture, though she wondered why he’d inscribed the date Duncan’s corpse was discovered as the date of his death, and why the date of his cremation was inscribed August 4, in spite of the invoice stating that he was cremated on August 1. The undertaker told them that they wouldn’t be allowed to carry the ashes with them on the plane, but would have to check them in.
“But there was no way I was going to put his ashes in the cargo hold,” Bob recounted. “Nope, Duncan flew home with us in my backpack.”
Chapter 19: “Do not stand at my grave and weep”
When Duncan was sixteen, he left home for the first time to play for a minor league farm team in the town of North Battleford. He lived with an elderly couple, and in the evenings he often played cards with them before bed. One night, just after he went down to his basement bedroom, he heard the lady yelling for help. He ran upstairs to find that her husband had just collapsed, apparently from a heart attack. She was beside herself. Duncan quickly called an ambulance and tried CPR on the man, but couldn’t revive him.
That summer, while watching On Golden Pond with Lynda, he was especially moved by the final scene in which Katharine Hepburn’s character panics when her husband, played by Henry Fonda, has an angina episode, as it reminded him of the real scene he’d recently witnessed. He asked Lynda if she’d ever seen anyone die.
“No,” she replied.
“You should count yourself lucky,” he said. A few years later, he came across a poem about death and showed it to her: