Flights and Falls

by R. M. Greenaway

  Torr stood back with arms crossed while Leith questioned her. He opened with an apology for intruding at a time like this. He told her some progress was being made on Amelia’s MVA case. She looked unimpressed. As far as she understood, he realized, there was no case. A momentary loss of control had cost her girlfriend’s life. She didn’t need cops coming around to tell her so.

  He told her that there could be more to it than a simple MVA, and that he would appreciate it if she could tell him about any conversations she had with Amelia that day. Or that night at the hospital, before Amelia passed. Anything could be helpful. Had Amelia mentioned where she was going before she left? Or managed to say anything as she lay injured?

  Tan’s answer was a grunt that could have been yes, no, or maybe.

  “Sorry?”

  She repeated herself more clearly. “Yeah.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Well, can you repeat anything she said, Tiffany?”

  “Dunno. Couldn’t figger.”

  “She was talking, but you couldn’t figure out what she was saying?”

  “’S’bout it,” she said.

  That’s about it, Leith translated. “Did she say what happened at all, what caused the crash?”

  Tan shook her head, combining it with a shrug, which probably meant sorry, I’m not sure.

  “Did she recognize you?”

  Silence.

  He repeated the question.

  Silence.

  “Do you know the answer to that?”

  Silence.

  “Did you understand my question? Did Amelia give any indication she recognized you? ’Cause that would tell us —”

  “Why don’t you leave me the fuck alone,” she said, and started to shut the door.

  Leith spoke louder. “Sure, we’ll do that now. We might talk again, though, okay? And I’d appreciate if you’d give me a call —”

  Slam.

  On the way downstairs, Torr hooted with glee and punched Leith on the shoulder. “Didn’t I tell you? Dunno, dunno, dunno.”

  Fifteen

  INTO THE MIX

  NEXT UP ON LEITH’S agenda was talking to the individual who Bosko had mentioned would be coming in, the woman who had stopped at the Amelia Foster crash scene on the Sea to Sky and responded to the media release asking for witnesses.

  Judging by her quaint handle, Desiree Novak, Leith expected either an Amazon in Lycra or a little old lady in a pillbox hat, but she turned out to be a tallish girl of seventeen, her tow blonde hair cut short except for a swish of long bangs.

  She was at the age where he wasn’t sure whether to refer to her as a girl or a woman. There should be a word for those in between, he thought. But she was more of a girl, in his mind. Maybe it was her open expression and her lack of cosmetics. She was also looking around with what seemed like anxiety, so he told her not to worry, and asked again, as he had downstairs, whether she was okay talking without a parent present.

  “Oh, I’m not worried,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to have a look around in here, so it’s actually kind of exciting. I’m actually planning to join up soon as I’m nineteen.”

  “Are you really? Good for you.”

  She nodded. “I also want to say right off the bat that I’m really sorry I didn’t come forward sooner, but it’s because I didn’t even see the crash, and I only stopped for a few minutes to see if I could help. Then I was at McDonald’s the day before yesterday, and I saw on TV about how you wanted anybody who even just stopped at the crash scene to come forward.”

  “And I really appreciate that you did,” Leith said. “So tell me about the night of the crash, Desiree. When did you arrive and what did you see?”

  “You can actually call me Dezi,” she said. “I get totally thrown off when people say Desiree.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Well, I just got my N,” she said, referring to her novice licence, “which means I can finally drive by myself, so I cruised out to Squamish and back. I kind of didn’t tell my mom the absolute truth about that, because I knew she would not be pleased if she found out I was on the Sea to Sky all alone — she calls it the Killer Highway. Well, I got home really late and she found out anyway, and she almost took away my licence, but I managed to talk her out of it.”

  She smiled and her grey-blue eyes lit up. Leith felt that if he was a lot younger and much less married, he might be falling in love right now. “Was it your own car you were driving?”

  “Not really. But my mom has two vehicles, and she lets me drive the old Sidekick. So anyway, I was heading home from Squamish, and I saw two cars stopped at the side of the highway with their emergencies flashing, and I figured somebody might be in trouble, so I pulled in behind them. Then I saw some other lights shining across the highway, from the ditch. I went over and saw that a red car had hit a tree and was on its side, and there were two guys down there. I went down and they asked if I had a phone. I said I didn’t, which is a long story …”

  Aha, Leith thought, the nagging memory of Gilmartin’s half-absorbed statement coming back to him. So this was the girl without a phone.

  “And they both kind of swore, and then one guy, the younger one — he said he was a cop, so maybe he even works here?”

  “I think you’re probably right,” Leith said. “Can you tell me what the older guy looked like?”

  “I didn’t see him much. Mostly I was looking at the girl in the car.”

  “Sure. What about the vehicle the older guy was driving?”

  She shook her head. “It was just lights flashing in the night to me.”

  “Did the two men have any conversation that you heard?”

  “No, other than talking about phones, and how one of them should go flag down a car, and somewhere along the line the young one said he was a cop. Which, if you know who he is, you should totally give him some kind of commendation, because it was really impressive how caring and concerned he was.”

  “I’ll certainly pass that on,” Leith said.

  “Anyway, he told the other guy to go flag down a car, because ‘everybody else on the planet except us three has a phone,’ is what he said. So the other guy took off to do that, and the cop said he’d stay with the girl, and he kind of sat down right in the mud and held her hand, like, talking to her.”

  “Was she talking to him, too?”

  Dezi shook her head. “I don’t think so. She was in pain, mostly kind of whimpering. It was horrible.” She ran a hand over her face as if to wipe away the memory, then straightened in her chair. “But I guess you get a lot of that kind of thing in this job. You have to be strong.”

  “That’s for sure. And what happened next?”

  “Well, then a few minutes went by, and a bunch of cars zipped by above, and the cop said, ‘Why isn’t he flagging them down?’ Then we went to check, and there was no sign of the guy. So he started trying to flag one down himself, and I said I really had to go home or my mom would worry, and he said, ‘That’s okay, you should go,’ so I left.”

  “And you went home, did you?”

  “I did. And Mom got mad, and so on and so forth. I didn’t even realize I should give a statement till I saw it on TV, like I said. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right. When you found out we were looking for witnesses, you came forward, and that’s more than a lot of people would do.”

  “It’s not very helpful, though, is it. I wish I’d saved the day.”

  “Well, if you carry through and join up, maybe you will be saving the day not long from now,” Leith said, knowing he was going overboard with the niceness thing. He busied himself jotting down the end time of the interview.

  “People tell me joining up is really hard,” Dezi said. “Like, a whole bunch of hurdles before you can get in. Is that true? Like, what are my chances?”

  “You’ve got to be physically able, and of good character. If you’ve got that under your belt, you’re off to a runn
ing start.”

  “Do you have to be a genius at math? Because I’m not.”

  Leith grinned. “Honesty is more important than math. You should see my idea of long division. And I’ll tell you what, if you’re serious about a future here, I’ll see if I can get you a grand tour of the station right now.”

  “Really? That would be awesome. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  Leith thanked her again for attending, then called Doug Paley and asked if there was somebody around with twenty minutes to spare to give a future recruit a detachment tour.

  * * *

  “Fuck,” JD muttered. Just because she happened to be taking a short break and staring out the window, thinking about a different life, Doug Paley was shackling her with a task fit for a first-year trainee. “Where is she?” she asked him with a sigh.

  The young woman she collected from the reception desk looked a little embarrassed, but polite and enthusiastic. JD swore again — but only silently. “Hi, there,” she said. “I’m JD. So, I hear you want to sign up.”

  Fifteen minutes would be plenty, she decided, as she started to show the teen the workings of the building. Dezi showed keen interest and asked a lot of questions. Damn good questions, too, JD thought, pleasantly surprised. Half an hour later they stopped on the main floor, where JD found a souvenir RCMP T-shirt for the girl, because as teens went, this one actually wasn’t so bad. The tour was no frivolity to Dezi, either. She was not only enthusiastic about signing up, but determined that it would happen. She told JD what had first inspired her. Several years ago she had watched a policewoman chase down, tackle, and overpower a guy on Lonsdale.

  “Made me kind of proud,” Dezi said, and JD thought she could detect sadness within her smile.

  The tour ended in the underground parkade. They sat in a marked cruiser and talked about onboard computers and changes in policing over the years. They talked about the risks, too. They even talked about sexual harassment, discrimination, the headway women were finally making, and possibilities for the future. Dezi sat in the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel and gunning ahead down a road of adventure rather than a parkade wall.

  What the poor kid didn’t seem to be seeing was the mountain of paperwork behind that parkade wall, though JD had given her fair warning.

  Dezi had shrugged it off. “I can handle paperwork.”

  “I’ll ask you again in five years.”

  They left the cruiser and returned to the lobby, where Dezi mentioned the news she’d heard, about the shooting of a local RCMP officer in his own home. “They aren’t saying much about it, except he’s in critical condition,” she said. “I hope he’ll be okay.”

  If she was fishing for the inside story, she wasn’t going to get it. “He’ll be all right,” JD said. She held the door open, and Dezi fairly danced down the steps, smiling up at the light rain as if touched by infatuation. She turned to wave. “I’m already loving this job, JD!”

  JD watched the future cadet bounce away and thought, Let’s just hope the job loves you back.

  Sixteen

  UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS

  December 17

  ON FRIDAY MORNING Leith arrived at the office to find a fair-sized gathering knotted about the main-floor coffee machine. Bosko was there, beaming, along with Urbanski, Torr, JD. General duty members milled about as well — Kenny Poole, Raj Sattar, Cal Dion. Everyone looked pleased.

  “What’s up?” Leith asked.

  “He opened his eyes,” JD told him.

  “Beat the odds,” added Urbanski.

  So Craig Gilmartin had passed Go. Leith beamed, but only fleetingly. He had to get a statement from the patient, and hopfully now he could do just that.

  * * *

  The constable was awake, but barely. He had been moved to a different room on the hospital’s second floor, into a less terminal-looking bed, and stripped of the bulk of his life-support machinery. The door had a guard on duty. The room within was dim and quiet, and Gilmartin lay flat on his back, a tube strung under his nose, his bare arms loose at his sides. He looked up at his two visitors with faint interest, focusing more on Raj Sattar, probably because Sattar was leaning close.

  Leith had invited Sattar along, as the young man professed to be Gilmartin’s work buddy, and his presence might help put Gilmartin at ease.

  “Hey, bro, you’re awake! And about time, too,” Sattar was telling his friend in a loud whisper.

  Gilmartin raised the first and second fingers of his right hand in what looked to Leith like a failed Christ-like gesture, then let them drop again.

  “So you’ve been out for a hundred years, you slack-ass.” Sattar’s aggressive whispering was more annoying than a bellow, to Leith. Still, he was glad the kid was here, doing all the chummy breaking of the ice, which he would have failed at, badly. “How ya feeling?”

  “Shitty,” Gilmartin whispered back.

  Sattar turned to Leith. His teeth flashed in a grin as he hissed with delight, “He feels shitty!”

  As pleased as Leith felt, he could see they wouldn’t get much out of this visit. He congratulated the survivor for, well, surviving, then tried the one question that couldn’t wait. “Do you know who shot you, Craig? Can you give us a name or description?”

  Gilmartin shook his head. Not a faint no, but a definite uh-uh, nope, no chance.

  It was another piece in the puzzle, albeit not a great one. Leith told him to get some sleep, that he would be back later. He walked with Sattar down the monochrome halls — all the gloomier for the twinkle of Christmas decorations — past patients out for slow strolls, past staff and visitors.

  “Guess we can skip the mourning lilies,” Sattar declared, and jabbed the elevator’s down button.

  “Bunch of daisies will do,” Leith agreed. Daisies reminded him of Dezi Novak — there was another question he would have to put to Gilmartin when he was up to talking. Why did he leave her out of his statement?

  They left the hospital, stepping out into the blustery cold now embellished by an icy, fine drizzle, and stood on the curb watching the cars swish by. Leith glanced at the winter sky. In every place he had lived up till now, winter had brought snow. Snow was rare in the Lower Mainland, but rain was anything but. Normally the rain depressed him, yet today it seemed kind of nice. Sattar seemed to think so, too, cheerfully snugging down his patrol cap. The traffic broke and they jaywalked across 15th to the detachment to share the news of Gilmartin’s first words.

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon, Dion was upstairs, working in a semi-seconded mode in the General Investigation Section. His latest efforts to snub the GIS weren’t working so well; maybe his attitude was only making him stand out more. Maybe it was time to go with the flow.

  He had a desk and a slate of assignments, none too challenging, and for the most part was left to his own devices. The attempted murder of Craig Gilmartin was at the top of everybody’s to-do list, as it was on his. Nobody had come up with any good theories so far, but one had taken shape in his mind overnight, further developing this morning. But it was a weird idea, highly unlikely, and one he tried to banish.

  Banishing wasn’t working so well, and all he could do was face it squarely and work on its logistics. He drummed his fingers on the desktop and thought it through, start to finish.

  No. Impossible.

  He watched a uniformed member escort a heavy-set girl with short, spiky hair and facial piercings into the section’s foyer. She wore jeans and black leather. She fixed her sights on Jimmy Torr at his desk and called out, “Hey.”

  Torr had a habit of pulling in his gut when approaching women. He did so now. “Ms. Tan, hey. What can I do for you?”

  It was Tiffany Tan, then, Amelia Foster’s partner. Dion had heard Torr and some others talking about her, putting her down, like jerk-off schoolboys passing notes. Dion had been one of those schoolboys, once. Amazing what being ass-deep in trouble could do to a person’s humility.

  “Where’
s the other guy?” Tan asked Torr.

  “What other guy?” Torr said. “Dave Leith, you mean?”

  She shrugged.

  Torr looked around, searching for Leith.

  “I think he’s talking to Bosko,” Dion said.

  Torr was forgetting about his gut, gesturing like a traffic cop, relieved. “Good. Take her down there, would you?”

  Dion led Tan down the hall to Bosko’s office and knocked on the jamb. Inside, Leith sat across from Bosko, listening, ankle over knee and file folder in hand. Their conversation paused when Dion apologized for interrupting. “Tiffany Tan’s here to see you.”

  Leith stood. He asked Tan if she wanted to talk in private. She didn’t, so he offered her his chair. She refused the chair, too. “I thought ’bout it,” she said, coldly. “Why she wiped out, eh. If you wanna know.”

  “That’s exactly what I want to know,” Leith said. He remained on his feet, and Dion guessed he would have preferred ushering her off to an interview room, but didn’t want to break the connection. He could see why. Tan’s commitment to this conversation looked tenuous, at best.

  “You’ve remembered something Amelia said?” Leith asked her.

  “Right.”

  “This was in the hospital?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m all ears,” Leith said. He caught Dion’s eye, and his glance said notebook out, please.

  Dion got out notebook and pen. Tan adjusted her stance slightly, noticed him with his pen, and dictated to him directly. “What she said is, she said it was a bird. She’s a birder, right? Obsessed. So she’s prob’ly just flipped out on morphine, or Dem, or whatever the fuck they had her on. She was talking weird.”

  “A bird?” Leith said.

  “A dead bird, all lit up and screamin’. ” Tan’s entire body rose an inch or so in a shrug, then settled back with a squeal of leather.

  “Huh,” Leith said. “Were those her words?”

  She shrugged again. “Said, ‘Big dead bird come at me, Tiff, all lit up.’”

  “And screaming?”