They were airborne, and he was the pilot. He whooped in triumph. The audience clapped and cheered.
Above them all, a small silhouette against the blurry heavens curved in lazy circles. Once he got a feel for the thing, he tried a drunken loop de loop. He was considering a second loop-the-loop body-spin combo when Bosko appeared beside him. “Good job! Now for the hard part. Think you can land it in one piece? Not sure how Arlo would feel if I brought it back in a garbage bag.”
“No problem. I think.”
Gritting his teeth, he gave the plane another long, curving approach, throttled down and brought the craft thumping to the turf. It bounced, tilted, and landed on a wheel and a wing. He raced to check for damage, found none, and turned to give the thumbs-up. Bosko smiled, and the spectators clapped again and went on their way.
Bosko didn’t take over the controls, as Dion thought he would, but instead picked up the plane and led the way back to the vehicles. “Arlo calls it a cheap knock-off,” he said. “With a more expensive model and some practice, a person could really fine-tune his manoeuvres, do you think?”
“It would take a lot of practice, but a pro could land on a dime.”
“Did you ever land on a dime?”
“Not even nearly,” Dion said, still elated, forgetting that his past was supposed to be a blur.
“It’s fairly noisy,” Bosko said. “A lot louder than a drone, say. Probably audible for quite some distance.”
“That’s why flying clubs get stuck in out-of-the-way places,” Dion said. “It’s a noisy sport.” Now that the fun was over, he was eying Bosko with wonder. “What’s this all about?”
“Oh,” Bosko said. “Sorry, I thought the word had spread already. I’m thinking in terms of Amelia Foster’s screaming, lit-up bird. What d’you think?”
* * *
A radio-controlled plane as a murder weapon was a long shot, but Bosko wanted it checked out for feasibility, and a day trip was planned. Leith would head up the expedition, along with JD Temple, Dion being included for his plane-flying expertise, he supposed.
JD pulled into the viewpoint close to the Amelia Foster accident site, and the three of them left the car to study the geography. They looked along the highway and up the cliffside, scanning for a spot where the theoretical plane operator could post himself, or herself, to dive-bomb passing cars.
“There,” Leith said, pointing. “It’s the only place it could work. What d’you say, Cal?”
Up within the young forest was a scrubby crag, mostly hidden from passing vehicles by bushes and small conifers. “I guess with a small plane you could air launch from up there,” Dion said. “Then land in this pullout. But it would take a lot of skill. And even then there’s a big luck factor. The wind’s got to be just right, and you’d better hope no vehicles are filling up the pullout when it’s time to land. So if somebody did it with a plane, it couldn’t have been premeditated. Had to be some kind of accident.”
“If Foster’s crash was an accident caused by an RC plane mishap,” JD said, “then who chased down Rory Keefer and Craig Gilmartin?”
“A drone wouldn’t need a runway, would it?” Leith asked.
“A drone doesn’t scream,” Dion pointed out. “Foster said the dead bird was screaming.”
“But Craig said he heard a buzz or a whir.”
“Drones make noise, too,” JD said. “They … drone. Some are quite annoying. I’ve got a niece, and I can attest to how annoying drones can be.”
Dion looked up at the outcrop. “A drone’s more likely.”
“Actually, my niece prefers her micro RC jet that screams bloody loud,” JD said. “It’s very fast, and agile, too, and I’ve seen her land it hard and fast in the grass at my feet. No long runway necessary. Not very big, but I guess if that came screaming at your windshield you might crank the wheel hard.”
So the options were there.
“Go check it out, would you?” Leith said.
Dion and JD waded through dewy weeds and began the climb. At the top — about the height of a two-storey building — they balanced on the slippery, mossy rock face and surveyed the area below. Good view on the approaching highway, partial on the crash zone itself. Through the brush, Dion could see their black Crown Vic parked across the road, flashers blinking.
“That would have been nighttime, though,” JD said. “Can you fly these things at night?”
Dion pointed at the pullout some distance down the highway, with its oversized lamp standards. “At least that section would have been illuminated pretty good.”
A car appeared in the distance and drew close, giving a rough idea of timing, no more than twenty seconds from first viewing to when the vehicle blazed past. “The jet’s probably already circling,” JD said. Though they don’t have great battery life. At least my niece’s doesn’t.”
On their return to the base of the rock, Leith crossed the road to join them. “I couldn’t see you up there.”
“We could see the road and parts of the crash site,” JD told him. “It would be tight, but like Cal says, with a lot of skill and a little luck, I guess it’s possible. I’m actually starting to like this dipshit idea of Mike’s.”
Leith didn’t look convinced. Dion wasn’t going to say how unconvinced he was, or that this was nothing but a field trip for him. Almost as fun as flying planes by the sea.
But JD was rolling with the idea. “So let’s say it’s a micro jet. I stand up there, wait for the red Mazda to come into view in that patch of lamplight, then deploy. It swoops down. Mazda swerves and goes shooting into the woods. Meanwhile another car’s approaching, also from the right, also southbound, and I just have time to bring the plane in. I drop down out of sight and watch a man get out of the teal-coloured car. That’s Rory Keefer. A few seconds later another car approaches from the right — that happens to be an off-duty cop named Craig Gilmartin. Keefer flags down Gilmartin. I can’t hear what’s happening, because it’s way down there in the trees, but I see both men go down to the crash site.”
In Dion’s opinion, the idea was already collapsing. In Leith’s, too, by the look on his face. “And then what?” he asked.
JD frowned at the roadway as Leith advanced her scenario through to its conclusion. “Supposedly you’re going to now follow Keefer to the Mini-Mart in Horseshoe Bay and kidnap him. Where’s your car?”
“Crap,” JD said. “Where’s my car?”
There was nowhere close by that another car could have hidden, not that Dion could see. Gilmartin had said there were no other vehicles sitting on the road within view besides his own and Keefer’s.
Leith went on killing the idea. “You just go crashing out of the bushes, do you, and jump on his tailgate as he pulls out?”
“I’ve got an accomplice,” JD said. “We’re in radio contact.”
Leith shook his head. “No. The boss has blown this one. It’s getting way too high-tech and unlikely.”
“And anyway, what’s the point?” JD agreed. “What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned high-powered rifle? Or what’s wrong with following the Foster girl, say, like he did with Keefer? Wait till she stops somewhere, throw her into the trunk, deal with her later. Who needs this fancy shot-in-the-dark RC business?”
Listening to the argument, Dion believed that both of them were missing the point. Not that he was getting it himself, but it was in there somewhere.
“And besides,” Leith was saying, as they recrossed the highway back to the car, “even leaving aside the follow-up of chasing down Keefer, say you’re out here in the bushes with your gizmo, and you successfully crash the Mazda. Then what? How do you get away? The crash happens, and pretty soon people are swarming all over the place, onlookers and ambulance attendants and police. Someone might have seen your gizmo gunning for the car, and you’d have them out beating the bushes looking for you. And look around.” The three of them stood on the ocean side of the highway and looked around. “There’s nowhere to run, is there? There’s roc
k face there, ocean there, road there. You’re cold and uncomfortable, you’re terrified of being discovered, and the place is a beehive of activity.”
“How about this, then,” JD said. “Some A-hole on a bicycle was riding along here with his plane strapped to his rack. Stopped, decided to give it a run, did the deed by accident, then laid low, trembling in his boots, till the place cleared out, and made his getaway, followed by us jumping to wrong conclusions all over the place. The Rory Keefer killing is unrelated, a business deal gone wrong, something along those lines, and Gilmartin stepped on somebody’s toes. Possible, right?”
They got in the car, Leith saying an A-hole on a bicycle toting an RC airplane along the Killer Highway in mid-December was such a remote possibility that he wouldn’t bother putting it on the board.
“Fine,” JD said. “I tried.” She fired up the car. From the passenger seat, as they pulled away, Leith looked back at Dion, maybe as an invitation to pitch in. Dion had nothing to pitch, but he was still looking for that point he was missing. He leaned and tilted to look sideways and up — way up — at the rock face sloping over the band of trees, an almost sheer tower of stone blotting out the sky and casting this segment of highway in cold, almost perpetual shadow.
Twenty
FELLRIDGE
AT DEBRIEF, LEITH SAT through Jimmy Torr’s report of nothingness. Little had surfaced about Rory Keefer. Though unemployed, he’d had a healthy bank account, but his wealth was explained by an old inheritance and wise investments. The mysterious Giorgio that Keefer’s wife, Jo-Lee, had suggested as a lead was no lead at all. Inquiries in Stewart had gone nowhere, too. A friend of a friend of Keefer’s thought he had mentioned getting a hold of some guns underground, but that too died as a single puff of hearsay.
Sean Urbanski reported that he had nothing much on Amelia Foster, either. She had worked for the last two years as a housekeeper in an assisted living facility in Lions Bay, but had recently been laid off and was job hunting. She had a minor criminal record — shoplifting — was openly gay, and eked out a shared existence with Tiffany Tan in a one-bedroom apartment on 1st Avenue. Tan had no criminal record, scraped by working in a produce store on Commercial Drive earning twelve hundred a month gross, and that was it. There was nothing more he could wring from her.
At the end of the Keefer/Foster debrief, Leith told the team about Bosko’s scrapped theory involving an RC airplane or drone. The theory generated laughter and not much else.
* * *
Late that night Leith got a call from Craig Gilmartin.
“I’ve thought of something,” the constable said. “I don’t know if it’s anything, but I was teaching Raj how to play chess when he said something that struck me.”
Hoping it would be some breakthrough revelation, Leith grabbed pen and paper from his bedside table. “Yes?”
He heard only silence.
“Damn,” Gilmartin said. “I’ve forgotten.”
Leith flipped the pen in the air. Next to him, Alison laid down the novel she was reading and looked at him over her glasses.
“Sorry,” Gilmartin said. “I was quite doped at the time. It seemed important.”
“Retrace your steps,” Leith told him.
Gilmartin tried. “I was playing chess by myself, and Raj came along. I was glad to see him. I’m going crazy in here — nothing to do but watch TV. He said he could only stay a minute. I told him to sit down and at least play a game of chess with me. I told him he could be white. He said he didn’t want to be white, and he doesn’t play kids’ games.” Gilmartin stopped to laugh, a raspy sound that didn’t improve Leith’s mood.
“It was so funny,” the kid said, still tittering to himself. “I set up the board anyway, and was showing him how each piece moves, right? I’m going, this is a rook, he can only go straight, and this is a knight, he hops along like this, one, two, three, and so on, then Raj grabs the white king and it kicks my black king right off the board, and he says, ‘This guy knows kung fu! Checkmate.’” When Gilmartin was done laughing, he said, “Where was I?”
“The white king knows kung fu.”
“Right. Then Raj threw a packet of gummy bears at me and left.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“And somewhere in there is something important you wanted to tell me. Something to do with Amelia Foster. Something she said at the scene?”
“Man, I’m so sorry,” Gilmartin said. “It’s just gone.”
“No worries,” Leith said. “If it comes to you, call me right away. Good night.” He banged the phone down, maybe a bit harder than called for, and rolled over to get a few hours’ sleep.
* * *
In the morning, though he hadn’t heard from Gilmartin with any update on his non-revelation, Leith went across to the hospital with Dion. The patient looked almost chipper, seated like an oversized child in pajamas on the edge of his bed, waggling his toes. He invited the men to unbury a couple of chairs and make themselves comfortable. “I touched these today,” he said, pointing at his feet. “Well, not without the help of my rehab specialist. She made me do it.”
“Good for you.” Leith cleared a chair of magazines, a fruit basket, a dancing beer can, saying as he worked, “I’m not sure if you were talking in your sleep last night, Craig, but you called me with something important you’d remembered, but then you forgot. I’m hoping it’s come back to you since.” He sat down and waited.
“Oh, for sure it did,” Gilmartin said, to Leith’s surprise. “I’m sorry, sir. I should have called you, but it’s nothing. It seemed like something at the time, but it wasn’t. The problem is that I remember the conversation surrounding what it was, but not the it itself. It just didn’t stick firmly in my mind, the name of it. Didn’t stick at all, to be honest, which is the whole problem, I guess.”
“Hold it,” Dion said. “Back up and start over. I’m losing your its.”
“Like I said, it was nothing. When the fellow and I went down to see if the girl, Amelia, had survived, she was lying there trying to say something. I just can’t remember what it was. All I remember is our response, which is what I was trying to remember last night.” Gilmartin glanced at Leith, then addressed Dion again, as he was the one taking notes. “She said something — I think she told us to run away, or something — then said something else, and this guy and I said, or maybe I just thought it in my head, What’s she doing talking about kids’ games? Something like that. But I can’t remember what the kids’ game was.”
Dion summarized aloud from his notes. “Amelia Foster said something. You talked about what it was she had said, or thought about it, and believed it was a kids’ game she was speaking of. Have I got that right?”
“Yes. It was so depressing,” Gilmartin said. “This girl bleeding to death in front of me and talking about kids’ games, like maybe she was flashing back to childhood. Did you find the guy? You could ask him. Maybe he’d remember.”
Leith didn’t tell Gilmartin about Rory Keefer and his new home in the ether. He was trying to think of a game to suggest, to see if he could jog a memory, but Dion beat him to it. “Tag?”
“What, sir?” Gilmartin said.
“The kids’ game, was it tag?”
“No. It wasn’t tag.”
“Hopscotch?” Leith said.
“Definitely not hopscotch.”
“Cops and robbers?”
“It definitely was not cops and robbers, either.”
Dion seemed to have run out of possibilities after tag, so Leith searched his early years for more suggestions. “Jacks?” he asked. “Snakes and ladders? Pin the tail on the donkey?”
“Nope, nope, nope.”
“Hide-and-seek?”
He saw Gilmartin’s eyes light up like two green Christmas baubles.
“That’s what it was!” the constable cried. “Hide-and-go-seek! ‘Hide,’ she said. Not run away. ‘Hide, hide.’ And when I got closer, she said, ‘Hide-and-go-seek.�
�”
* * *
Reflecting on Gilmartin’s revelation, Dion believed it was a game of some kind, the whole thing, the dead birds and smashed cars, sheer cliffs, toy planes, hide-and-go-seek, the corpse in the woods tied to a tree — not just stabbed, but beaten with a rock. Some kind of twisted, sadistic, giddy, out-of-control game.
How the killing of Rory Keefer linked with the shooting of Gilmartin was too obscure to consider for now. One thing at a time. Crack one case, and the other will fall open, too.
When lunch hour arrived, he left the detachment for some off-the-record investigating. He drove to the Maplewood Conservation Area, thinking like a killer. He timed a hike through the woods — not a brisk walk, but hauling his imaginary victim through the dark, prodding him along, helping him up when he stumbled, all the way to the execution tree. From here he stood and took in the setting. Scary. His exhalations hung pale in the cold air. Remnants of crime-scene tape remained snagged in the bushes behind the tree. He walked forward and touched the bark. He turned his back to the tree, squatted down, and looked outward at the woods from the murder victim’s eyes.
He was doing too good a job of being there, channelling Keefer, getting a hint of the man’s horror. He was down on his rump, tied to the tree, the killer moving toward him. To be here, alone, facing the faceless … fill in the face, name the assassin, win the game.
“Local,” he said, watching the killer approach with knife in hand. He rose to his feet as the fear became too visceral and stepped away from the tree.
The killer was a local, and young, still a boy.
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