“Since midday last Thursday; maybe a little earlier.”
“You said on the phone this truck is linked to a case you’re working on—the woman from Vancouver who was abducted last week.”
Alex nodded in my direction, and Bob turned to look at me, taking in the row of stitches on my forehead and what remained of the bruises on my face. No concealer today.
“Yikes,” he said seriously. Lucas moved closer; protective.
“Well, I’d best get started.” He put on overalls, booties and a pair of disposable gloves and got to work.
“The Vancouver forensics team will be here soon,” Alex told him.
“Sergeant, I’m confused,” Bart said. “Is the forensic lab that’s coming up part of the VPD?”
“No. This crime scene is within RCMP jurisdiction. I requested the RCMP Forensic tech guys from Surrey to fly up.”
“Kate has explained policing jurisdiction in BC, in Canada actually, a number of times now. I get it, at least I think I do.” Lucas and Kate exchanged a glance.
“It’s a bit convoluted,” said Alex. Policing in BC is covered by 12 police forces; the RCMP is one of them and the biggest. Of the other eleven, VPD is the biggest and they have their own forensics lab and Scene of Crime services.
The RCMP is under contract to police all towns in the rest of BC who don’t have a police department of their own. We’re also the provincial police force for BC and the provincial umbrella includes those municipalities with their own police departments, including Vancouver. And we serve as Canada’s federal police force. As part of our federal mandate, we run the RCMP Forensic Laboratory Services. We have five forensic labs in Canada. One of these is in Surrey because RCMP E Division headquarters—E Division is the British Columbia/Yukon Division of the RCMP—is in Surrey. The Surrey guys are on their way up.”
“Okay” said Bart, “So VPD doesn’t have jurisdiction here in 100 Mile House, even though they’re also investigating Morgan’s case.”
“That’s right,” said Alex.
“But the RCMP and VPD are sharing results, right?” Bart asked.
“Yes, we are. The RCMP investigation of Morgan’s rescue at 100 Mile House is officially linked with the VPD investigation of her abduction,” said Alex.
I turned to Alex. “Detective Fernice told me she was going to request that the Terrace investigation into the disappearance of Carey Bolton be linked to my abduction.”
“They’re linked now. We’re sharing those files as well.”
“Finally, a step in the right direction,” said Kate, never one to hold back.
Alex looked at her, surprised, but said nothing.
“Morgan barely escaped with her life. Carey, still missing—nearly a month now. Michael spotting Carey and the other children in the car behind the club, that sighting basically ignored by the VPD! I know Carey’s alive, but ... Kate abruptly stopped speaking when she saw the look on Alex’s face.
“What are you talking about? Have you spoken with Carey?”
“No, I haven’t spoken with her. It’s not like that.”
“You should tell the sergeant what you know,” Bart said.
“What exactly do you know?” he asked.
Kate looked Alex in the eye and sighed. “Carey has been communicating with me. Not directly, I don’t mean that. It’s more that I feel what she’s feeling.”
Alex said nothing, his face skeptical. Kate didn’t miss that.
“I’m a recognized psychic, Sergeant. I’ve assisted police investigations in the past, both here and in Ireland. My connection with Carey comes and goes. Something is interfering with the communication, but I’m not sure what. I know she’s afraid, sometimes much more than others. She is alive. I do know that.”
“How long have you had this … connection?”
Alex wasn’t buying any of this, but if it bothered Kate, she didn’t let on. She was used to dealing with skeptics; me included, once upon a time.
“It started less than a week after Carey was taken,” said Bart.
“It’s always been sporadic. There’s been nothing since last night. It does worry me when it breaks off and that happens a lot.”
“Kate isn’t getting much sleep,” said Bart. He put his arm around her.
“Oh Bart, I don’t mind that! It’s just so frustrating that we’re not moving forward.”
“We wouldn’t be here if Kalea Talk hadn’t tweeted about the article. She might even know where Carey is!”
“She might be he,” I said, thinking of @banishedboy. “What happened to me is the talk of the university right now. It didn’t take much for Stacie Smith to put two and two together.”
“We’d like to talk to Stacie,” said Lucas.
“Absolutely not, Lucas! I will take care of that, or Detective Fernice. You do both understand why it’s important the police are the ones to talk with Stacie Smith about this? At the very least, the tweeter has intimate knowledge of the truck and its link to Morgan’s abduction. He, or she, has put themselves in harm’s way by leaking this information. Smith may be as well.”
“Yes,” we said together.
I watched as Alex strode over to Bob Golden and spoke with him.
“The child is still missing,” said Gwen, with a glance at me.
“Children,” said Kate. “We think she’s been trafficked.”
“Trafficked!” said Gwen. She didn’t know. It seemed that Alex didn’t bring his work home with him.
“When Morgan and I were in Guatemala earlier in the year, we heard a lot about women and children being trafficked and about the paedophiles who were showing up in Central America, more and more—on holiday.”
“70% of trafficked victims worldwide are women and girls,” said Kate. “Here in Canada, if a child is kidnapped, or suffers aggravated sexual assault—or is killed—then the minimum sentence is six years and the maximum is life! Canada hasn’t had many convictions and sentences to date have been minimal. Not much of a deterrent when there’s so much money to be made.”
“There are holes and gaps in the fabric of societies everywhere,” I said.
“Gender and racial inequality is what some call it,” said Kate. Seeing the look on my face. “Shit Morgan. I’m so sorry. I’m a thoughtless ninny.”
“You’re right though.”
“You don’t need me explaining that to you. I can be such a twit.”
“You’re tired.”
“That’s no excuse,” said Kate.
“In Guatemala, the villagers are known to take matters into their own hands.”
Alex had rejoined us and heard what Lucas said. “Rough justice?” he asked him.
“Exactly. If a trafficker is identified, the villagers kill him.”
“How long have you been in Canada, Lucas?”
“Since 1982. My mother and I came here as refugees, during the civil war.”
“I don’t know much about that,” said Alex.
“Guatemala’s 30-year civil war about land and who gets to control it, farm it. Most of the good land in Guatemala is owned by the Spanish, or families from other European countries, or Ladinos, people of mixed European-Maya heritage. Ladinos are the largest group of landowners now. They have a lot of power. Luis Gurriarán was a Jesuit priest who saw land cooperatives as the answer for the Maya. He came here to Canada, to study the cooperative model and shared what he learned back home. My parents were among the founding members of Santa Maria Trejá, the first land cooperative in Guatemala to reclaim jungle for farming—that was in 1970.”
“Your parents belonged to the first land cooperative in Guatemala,” said Alex.
“They did and theirs was very successful.”
I was surprised at Lucas. He rarely spoke about his childhood and then, only in a guarded way.
“When did you start your schooling?” Alex asked.
“As a small child. My father was my first teacher.
> “And your people?”
“My mother’s parents were Ixil-Maya, but on my father’s side I am Ladino all the way back to my great-great grandfather—a Ladino who owned the plantation my father, Rafael was born on. Dad identified himself as Mestizo, as do I. That’s what the Maya call those of mixed race. The Spanish prefer Ladino.”
Alex nodded, a knowing smile on his face.
“Why do they prefer Ladino?” asked Gwen.
Lucas smiled his beautiful smile. “Near the end of the nineteenth century, Guatemala had a dictator named Rufino Barrios. At that time, there were the Criollos, the Guatemalan born Spanish elite, about 5% of the total population; the Indigenous Maya, about 75%; and the Mestizos, who were estimated to be about 20% of the population. Barrios recognized that the allegiance of the Mestizos was often caught between the minority Spanish elite and the Indigenous majority and he gave them the chance to better themselves economically: the chance to work in government, serve in the army, to become professionals. But to take advantage of this opportunity, the Mestizos had to renounce their Mayan heritage. If they did, they became Ladinos—honorary Spanish—and helped to swell the ranks of the ruling elite. My great-grandfather was one of those.”
“I get it now,” said Gwen.
What Lucas said got me to thinking about my mom. A few years after she finished her degree at Lakehead, she married dad, an Irishman. When she did that, she lost her Indian Status and was no longer a member of the Greenwood Lake Reserve; her home, where she was born and grew up. She lost all membership rights. When that law was challenged and finally changed in 1985, she applied and got her Indian Status reinstated. And mine.
The others are deep in conversation but I’m suddenly very weary and too tired to talk anymore. I slipped into the back seat of the Prius and leaned my head back. Time for a quick nap. Through the side window, I can see Bob, going about his work. I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open and gratefully succumb to sleep.
I’m somewhere dark. My face is being pushed into rough carpeting and a man is yelling at me enraged and hitting me again and again and he is raping me and I try to push him off try to roll over but someone else grabs my hands and yanks my arms above my head and I can’t move and a big hand covers my mouth with a cloth. Someone else is trying to hold me and I lash out hard as I can with a sideways punch and he’s saying it’s okay it’s okay and I scream it’s not okay it’s not okay and I’m punching and punching and screaming and crying and then through the loud roaring in my ears I become aware of Lucas beside me. His voice. So quiet.
CHAPTER 16
Alex was at his desk nursing a coffee, the O’Meara case on his mind. She was having a bad time of it and he hoped it didn’t get worse before it got easier. That she was alive was a due to a reserve of inner strength on her part, or great stupidity on the part of her attacker, or more likely both. If he and Gwen hadn’t happened along when they did ... but he didn’t allow himself to finish that thought. He’d seen too many women who didn’t survive.
He’d just finished emailing Fernice with an update about the tweet and the truck. He passed along Stacie Smith’s cell number. He could feel a window was closing. Something had to happen, and it had to happen fast. He looked down at his notebook, open at the tweet.
KaleATalk@banishedboy: Kale or Kalea, masculine or feminine. Alex opened the database and did a search for Kalea Talk. No one listed. He did a search using the initials KT. That brought up 37 names with a first or last name beginning with a K or a T. Thinking banished boy, he narrowed the search to males first, which gave him 11 names. Only three had the initials KT. Alex started with them. K. Turner, 37 years old, was serving time for armed robbery; K. Tandy, in his late forties, reported dead of an overdose two years ago; K. Tamburino, 28 years old, got five years for dealing in 1996 and last known address Whitby, Ontario. He emailed Jeri Fernice, asking her to check their database for Kalea Talk. She emailed back: No luck on ours. A minute later, his phone rang.
“Hi Alex. Jeri here. What if the name’s a pseudonym, or maybe a mashup?”
“Yeah. I’m thinking male because of the banishedboy.”
“Maybe the young man who took Carey Bolton,” said Jeri.
“Could be.”
“Right off, if it’s a mashup, I see the word lake in the first four letters.”
“Lake. That leaves an ‘a’ and the word talk. Hmm.”
Both were silent a full minute.
“Talka,” said Alex, breaking the silence. Takla. Lake Takla. There’s a Takla Lake First Nations.
“Where are they?”
“In Prince George. That gives me an idea. I’ll call you back, Jeri.”
Alex plugged in a new search: male, Indigenous, 21 or under, Prince George—looked at the words: banished boy—added missing. 24 cases came up. The first three were resolved; the fourth, a boy, Jason, 11 years old, was still missing; taken by his mother, possibly in the States. Alex quickly keyed in unresolved. Now he had six, including the boy Jason. Jordan was next. He’d been missing three years and was 15 years old by now; a little too young. Next was Scott, who’d been missing for two years. He’d be 10 years old now, so definitely too young. The fourth entry was Seth Boyce. He’d been reported missing in Prince George about eight years ago, eleven at the time, so he’d be nearly 19 years old; a possibility. He checked the last two search results. Harjo, six years old; a recent case; a parental abduction by the father; still missing. The last entry was a boy named Lance, missing for three years. He would be thirteen now.
Alex pulled up the record for Seth Boyce, noted the mother’s address at the time, plugged her name into the computer and bingo, she still lived there: Tanya Boyce, 135 River Glen Road in Prince George, BC. Same address, same phone number. He made the call. Tanya Boyce picked up.
Alex identified himself and explained as gently as he could why he would like to see her. He could hear the hesitation in her voice, but as he quickly found out, it wasn’t due to his request. An officer from the Prince George RCMP detachment had dropped in on her the day before to ask how she was doing and if her son had been in touch. The hair on the back of his neck prickled.
“I told him I haven’t spoken to my son since the day he disappeared.”
Alex explained that he was pursuing another case possibly be linked to her son’s disappearance. Tanya Boyce remained silent.
“I know how difficult this request must be for you, Ms. Boyce, but I would like to talk with you about your son’s disappearance, the circumstances surrounding it and so on. I’d really like to speak with you in person.”
“Would you be coming today? I have a church group tonight that I don’t want to miss.”
“How about tomorrow morning? I can be there by noon.” She agreed.
It was about five hours from 100 Mile House to Prince George. Alex didn’t tell anyone that he planned on driving up to Prince George. Something told him that wasn’t a good idea and he hoped to have a much better idea why it wasn’t, after he spoke with Tanya Boyce. He told his dispatcher he’d be out of the office until late in the day. He emailed Jeri that he had a development he was going to chase down tomorrow that looked promising and he’d fill her in as soon as he knew something. He left the detachment and texted Gwen he was on his way. He was already late, and they were having dinner with friends.
CHAPTER 17
Seth didn’t bring the children back to the farmhouse till the middle of the night. Carey pretended she was asleep so Joy wouldn’t give her a sleeping pill. By the time everyone was in bed and asleep it was almost 5:00 a.m. Carey knew that because Ange had given her a watch. It had a soft wrist strap with pink and white daisies printed on it. She hoped she could keep it. The kids weren’t supposed to have watches or ever know what time it was, but no one ever told Ange what to do. He was one of the ones in charge. Carey didn’t understand why, if he was in charge, he told Seth it was okay to bring Christopher to the party. Joy was upset because the doctor sai
d yesterday, he needed time to heal. He was bleeding when they got back to the farmhouse and Joy did something to help that and gave him something for pain. He was in the downstairs bedroom with her, so she could watch him.
Carey heard the car leave. Seth must have gone somewhere. She could hear an animal scrabbling on the roof. Maybe it’s a raccoon, she thought, or a squirrel. Then there was the sound of something heavy sliding, then the sound of squealing metal and then a scream. Then nothing. She waited, but there was nothing more. The scream had sounded so human, not like an animal. She jumped out of bed and ran to the next bedroom. Georgina wasn’t in her bed and the bedroom window was open. She looked out and could see where the gutter had been pulled loose.
Carey ran downstairs and tried to open the front door, but it was locked. She went to the back bedroom to get Joy.
“Please help Joy! I think Georgina fell off the roof!”
Joy put on her housecoat and shoes and ran to the kitchen, but she couldn’t find the front door key.
“Seth’s not here. I heard him leave in the car,” said Carey. She followed Joy to her room and watched her call Seth on her cell.
“Get back here quickly. Georgina fell off roof. She might have escaped.”
Carey looked at her watch: 5:27 a.m.
“Who gave you that?”
“Ange.”
“Go back to bed Carey.”
Carey pretended to return to bed but stayed out of sight on the second-floor landing. Joy sat at the kitchen table until Seth returned. He unlocked the door and the two of them went outside. Carey looked at her watch: 5:42 a.m. She moved to her bedroom window, watched a flashlight moving in the dark, but couldn’t see what they were doing. A few minutes later, she heard the front door open. She moved quickly to the landing in time to see Seth carry an unconscious Georgina inside, then disappear into one of the back rooms. Carey climbed into bed with Marie and held one of her hands and tried not to cry. A while later, Seth came upstairs and made sure the windows were closed and locked.
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