Flights and Falls

by R. M. Greenaway

  The waitress, who spoke little English, came over and waved a menu inquiringly at Bosko. Now just watch him speak to her in fluent Vietnamese, Leith thought. But it didn’t happen. Bosko told the woman that he wasn’t staying, and she nodded and went away. “I told her that I thought she wasn’t being upfront with me,” he continued. “I recalled you telling me, JD, that her dream is to join the RCMP, so I leveraged that for what it was worth.”

  “I’ve been harping on that theme myself,” JD said.

  “It’s a useful hook. I could see I was hitting a nerve, and maybe I went a little further than I should have, but I told her I think she’s got knowledge that’s critical to our case. She said that’s not true, that she’s told us everything. I said I personally don’t believe that. She asked me why I don’t believe her, when everybody else does. I don’t think she was too impressed with my strong-arming, and I’m afraid I didn’t win any confessions, either. Sorry, JD. You might have to do some remediation there.”

  JD was interested. “How exactly did she let you know she wasn’t too impressed with you?”

  “It was kind of scary, actually. When I said I didn’t believe her, her eyes flashed daggers. For a moment there I thought she’d come at me, sink her teeth into my arm.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Not altogether. But she was obviously hurt. ‘You don’t know anything about me,’ she said. ‘I’m not a liar.’ When I refused to back down or apologize, her eyes filled with tears. She said you, JD, had her back, and so did everybody else, and I don’t know anything.”

  “That’s what she said, ‘You don’t know anything’?”

  “Verbatim.”

  JD shook her head in wonder. “Try looking at it from her perspective. She knows how critical honesty is. It’s high stakes for her, higher than for you or me. You’ve dashed the hopes of a future cadet, sir.”

  Leith tried to play the optimist for a change. “I think a little strong-arming was a good idea. She’ll mull it over, see she has no choice. We’ll be hearing from her soon.”

  * * *

  Dion was at Park Royal, the big mall in West Van that Looch used to call “the pod” because of its expansive space-colony feel. Acres of sterile whiteness with drone shoppers drifting between the food court and retail stores in stoned bliss.

  He was in a menswear store, trying on shirts and obsessing over his upcoming attendance at Urbanski’s New Year’s party. He remembered Sean’s parties and could picture himself in the scene. Before the crash he’d been happy and sharp-witted. He’d been a looker, a catch, and, well, full of himself.

  These days he coped with work quite well, but the party scene remained a challenge. Standing in corners with nothing to say, a tongue-tied fool pretending to fit in. Maybe the new shirt would give him the boost he needed to prove to JD he was still here.

  It was a fitted dark-maroon poly-cotton blend, with the faintest vertical stripes to offset the sheen. It snugged nicely to his body, but he wasn’t convinced about the cut of the collar. The saleswoman said the look was luscious.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said, and she buzzed off, leaving him to ponder the problem alone. Just not sure about the collar.

  What would Kate think of the shirt? He still bought clothes with her in mind, and sometimes he consulted Looch. He missed Looch more than ever these days —where was that closure he’d heard about? He could hear Looch telling him the collar would look good in a 1970s disco, which made him think about his embarrassing confrontation with Kenny Poole on Christmas Eve. Thoughts of Kenny led to Tony Souza, which led back to himself and the trouble he was in.

  Reflected in the mirror, the saleswoman was watching him. He paid for the shirt. Out in the pod’s atrium he realized he had lost his bearings and didn’t know which exit would take him to his car. But there was something else that had been nagging at him all morning, and he needed more info. Something to do with a ghost. He sat on a bench and called Leith.

  “Yo, Cal,” Leith answered.

  Yo?

  “Just a quick question,” Dion said. “Do we have a picture of Scott Mills on file?”

  “A mug shot, sure.”

  “I didn’t see it. What does he look like?”

  “Why?”

  “Something Heidi said. I’ll explain later.”

  Leith did his best to describe the mug shot, but the words formed no clear picture in Dion’s mind, even with eyes squeezed shut. Leith broke into his thoughts to ask again why Mills’s appearance mattered.

  “She said he looks like Evan,” Dion said. “Her dead son.” He watched shoppers float by. They, too, carried crisp designer-brand bags of merchandise.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but that’s fine.” Leith said. “Call me when you’re ready to explain.”

  “Sure. I’ll go take a look.”

  He disconnected.

  Half an hour later he was in the case room, looking at Scott Mills’s mug shot. He snapped a picture with his phone for reference and left the detachment. On the steps of JD’s low-rise he pressed the button and was buzzed in. He climbed the stairs and found her standing with arms crossed in the doorway of her apartment, apparently unwilling to let him pass. “How the hell do you know where I live?” she said.

  “It’s on file now, since Desiree Novak paid you a visit, remember? You’ve become a person of interest.”

  She didn’t return his grin, but allowed him in. Her apartment was smaller and darker than his. Messy, but nice enough. A lot of books, comfortable sofa, good-sized TV. Some travel souvenirs, but not a lot of knick-knacks or photos on the wall. He wondered if she’d ever had a boyfriend.

  “Don’t analyze me,” she snapped. “Just tell me what you want.”

  He showed her the shot on his phone of Scott Mills’s sullen face, a mug shot taken for the police file a couple years back when he got booked in for assault. Mills wasn’t bad looking, but he was pasty, heavy. Muscular, but not well-maintained. His hair was sandy blond and cut short, to the scalp. He had bully written all over him. “It struck me as strange,” Dion said. “Mrs. Gold-Seton saying that Scott looks like her dead son, Evan. I didn’t know what Scott looked like at that point, but even so, it didn’t seem right. And this proves it. They don’t look anything alike, do they?”

  JD looked at Mills’s face on Dion’s phone. “I wasn’t paying attention to Evan. I was looking at the judge.” She pulled out her own phone and scrolled through images till she found the one she had snapped of the tri-fold frame. “No,” she said, zooming in on Evan’s face. “He and Mills don’t look alike at all. But resemblance can be all in the soul.”

  “What soul?” Dion said. “This guy’s not like Evan, inside or out. Evan had dark hair, dark eyes. Look at him.” He pointed to the face on JD’s phone. “He’s soft. And Mrs. Gold-Seton said he was kind, wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Some might say effeminate,” JD said.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter what Evan was really like. It’s about how he’s not at all like Scott Mills, is what I’m saying.”

  “Maybe it’s just her wishful thinking. And don’t forget, she needs glasses.”

  “Only for reading. Not for studying people. You saw how she studied us. And does she look like the kind of person who gives in to wishful thinking?”

  “We only met her for fifteen minutes. We don’t know her. Think about it. She’s trapped in a place she doesn’t want to be, misses her dead son, wants to see Evan in Scott, so she does.”

  Dion shook his head. “No. Something weird is going on.”

  “An imposter?”

  They gazed at the two photographs, then JD whistled low. “How about this,” she said. “Heidi Gold-Seton never saw Scott Mills. Someone else brought flowers, someone who did look like Evan. Check out this guy.” Again on her phone, she zoomed in on Evan’s face to show Dion. “Who does he look like to you?” She waited a beat, and when it failed to click for him, said, “Amelia Foster, that’s who.”

 
* * *

  By the time Leith arrived in the case room, three portraits had been pinned to the corkboard. The latest person of interest was a man named Evan Gold-Seton, but apparently he was dead. Long gone from this world, in fact. JD described Dion’s revelations about Scott Mills and Evan Gold-Seton being such different people, and then her even bigger revelation about Scott Mills possibly being impersonated by Amelia Foster.

  The leap seemed at best sketchy, in Leith’s mind.

  But looking at the enlargements on the board, at Evan’s gentle, dark, and humorous eyes, and then at Amelia’s, he thought, Then again …

  Thirty-Four

  RED

  December 27

  SEAN URBANSKI SLAPPED a print on Leith’s desk and declared he had just broken the alibi Scott Mills’s mom gave him for the night of the Amelia Foster crash.

  Leith looked at a low-res photograph of sushi on a table, and somebody off to the side reaching in with chopsticks. A partially cut-off caption above said, Yummy sushi extravaganza birthday bash.

  Leith told Urbanski he was too tired and not smart enough to play games right now, and to please explain the significance of the picture.

  “It’s a screenshot from somebody’s Facebook page,” Urbanski said. “But to keep it simple for you, that lady with the chopsticks is Maria Gold-Seton.” He leaned over and tapped the date of the posting. “Taken on the night this sushi-eating lying bitch told JD she was at home with her son, Scott. Scott was watching TV and she was curled up reading, she says, so Scott couldn’t be out causing mischief with his toy planes.”

  “This is Maria Gold-Seton’s Facebook page?”

  “No. Her posts are set to private, but she neglected to hide her friends. So I mined their pages instead, and found this. Boom! Bottom line, Maria was out partying, not keeping an eye on Scott like she claims. Get it?”

  Leith wished he could be so enthusiastic. The sushi picture remained blurry and indefinite to him. “How do you know that’s her? Was she tagged?”

  “Nope. This was nothing but an accidental photobomb. In fact, that’s one thing I’m going to be asking this friend whose page this is. Did Maria get you to remove any photos or tags from that night? But I’m telling you, I recognize her. That’s Maria Gold-Seton.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Leith said. “Go firm it up.”

  * * *

  Two cars were sent to pull in Maria Gold-Seton and Scott Mills, but both returned empty. Nobody home, and nobody answering their phone, though the old GMC pickup registered to Scott Mills sat in the driveway down by the guest cottage where he lived. Leith and JD were discussing the hassle of applying for a search warrant when Kenny Poole showed up with Constable Raj Sattar at his side. Sattar had been in the party sent out to effect the arrest, and according to Poole, he had something they might want to hear.

  Leith and JD listened.

  “Just as we were walking away,” Sattar said, “this little poodle dog came at the window, barking, just furious, just yapping away at us, you know what I mean? It’s one of those bay windows up off the ground about eight feet, triple-glazed, I’m betting, so you couldn’t hear it through the glass — but it caught my eye, this white thing hopping up and disappearing again. It was hilarious, right? But everyone, like Corporal Wallace and all, was heading back to the vehicles and yelling at me that it’s time to go, and I almost did, but I wanted to see how high it would hop. So funny, its little paws just smacking at the glass. I love animals. Pretty tiny for a guard dog, hardly bigger than a squirrel, but boy, squirrels can bite.”

  “Get to the point, Sattar,” Poole said.

  “So I turned to go,” Sattar said. “But then I saw it was leaving smudges, this dog’s snout and paws. And that struck me as … what’s the word? As wrong, not fitting. Such a fancy house, probably plush carpets everywhere, and this dog’s running around in mud? I don’t like not following orders, but I went a bit closer to check, and it seemed to me the mud was reddish. But what do I know? I’m no mud expert. Probably it got its feet in the food bowl, is all. I hurried back to the cars. I reported what I’d seen to Corporal Wallace, but he didn’t seem too bothered by it. It’s only when I got back and told Kenny — Constable Poole, I mean — he thought it should be reported right away.”

  Wow, and good thing he did, Leith thought, thinking of the search warrant to be applied for. In filling it out, he would put a more ominous twist on the constable’s observations, leave out any suggestion of food bowls or mud. Getting the go-ahead would be a snap now, thanks to Sattar’s love of animals.

  * * *

  The potentially bloody paw prints got an expedited warrant. In the late afternoon of December 27, the team was on its way to the Gold-Seton estate at Lions Bay, where they would join forces with Squamish members. The day was moody and damp, and the grounds were quiet as Leith drove up the long private drive, following the ERT cavalcade. It was his first time to the park-like estate, and beside him JD was being his guide. That brushy lane to the left — she pointed — would lead to Scott Mills’s cottage. They’d check it out after the main house, which was that castle-like structure up ahead.

  They arrived at the perimeter and waited at the side of the car while the ERT members scoped the exterior and then gained entrance.

  “Not answering phones, bloody paw prints all over the living room window,” JD said. “Call me alarmist, but this isn’t some giant misunderstanding that’s going to end up in sheepish grins and eggnog toasts all round.”

  She was right. Minutes later came the news of discovery, and it was grim. They listened as the house was cleared of threats. Medics entered and medics left. The ambulance waiting at the wings departed. The coroner entered. The Forensics Identification Unit head stopped to talk to Leith, then went in along with two team members, loaded with equipment. Much of the ERT team left. Members of the press arrived, but were kept behind the lines. Dion and Urbanski had joined Leith and JD by their car to watch the to-ing and fro-ing and to listen to the chatter on the radio. An ERT member left the home in a rush, rummaged in the back of an SUV, then rushed back in, lugging a pet carrier.

  Finally the ERT team leader strode down the steps and confirmed that three bodies were inside, a female and two males. Also found was one antsy dog, alive and well, but now sedated. The dog was like a live blotting sponge, just covered in evidence, as Sattar had described, and the house was going to be a nightmare to process, in large part thanks to the dog.

  Leith learned that at the other end of the estate, Scott Mills’s cottage sat deserted, with his truck sitting cold outside. The cottage’s front door was not only unlocked, but swinging open in the breeze, as if the resident had left in a hurry. There were signs of upheaval inside, but no obvious violence.

  “We’ll check out the cottage next. For now it’s our turn here.” Leith looked with reluctance at the face of the mansion. Time for the crime-scene bunny suits and more horror stories for that memoir he had no desire to ever write.

  Inside the home, an electronic ring tone could be heard jangling from somewhere above, accompanied by its lonely echo. Within the foyer, not far from the front door, the body of a sturdy young man lay sprawled belly up, as if it had been blown backward by a punch. The force of his fall had knocked over furniture in the foyer, smashed a vase and scattered the flowers. His face was damaged beyond recognition, likely by a close-range bullet. Leith suspected this was Scott Mills. JD agreed; those were the clothes and physique of a young man.

  Dion had not stopped to speculate, but had moved with some speed across the foyer and through a larger room, following the line of contamination marked out with tape by Forensics, maybe searching for the source of the haunting ring tone. Leith left JD with the body of Scott Mills and followed Dion, finding him stopped halfway up a broad stone staircase. A body lay head downwards, blood gathering in its lower extremities and pinkening the visible quarter of its face.

  This dead man was heavier than the corpse by the front door, and olde
r, with a mop of silver hair messily flopped, stained red, and visibly polluted with brain matter. He seemed to be reaching for his phone, what looked like the latest iPhone on the market. It sat on the stair tread below his fingers. It had stopped ringing, but now started up again: a pop version of “Auld Lang Syne.”

  When the phone fell silent, for good this time, Dion looked around at Leith and said matter-of-factly, “This is Karl Gold-Seton.”

  Too matter-of-factly. “Stay to the path,” Leith warned, because Dion had stepped closer to the body than he should, as if to lend it a hand getting back to its feet. “Let’s see the third victim.”

  They gave the body wide berth and entered a room on the third floor that had been flagged for them by the ERT to check out. It was a lounge or library of sorts with bookshelves and a chandelier, arched windows veiled in gauze and velveteen. One window sash was flung open, and the air was frigid and sea scented. The view was an impressive swatch of Howe Sound, Leith noticed abstractedly. He focused on the furniture. The seating was massive and old school, with rich chocolate-brown leather affixed to oak with brass studs, leafy curlicues carved into the wood. The largest piece of the set, a slightly curved five-seat sofa, had been shoved out of place, rucking the oriental rug into wavelets over the sleek hardwood floor.

  The body lay behind it, Leith had been advised, in the narrow space between wall and sofa back. Dion was the first to go over and take a look, then he moved back to give Leith his turn.

  Leith got an acute view of the dead woman, from the perspective of her feet, her body little more than a darkened topography of flesh and blood-soaked fabric. The medics would have checked her for signs of life, but only as a formality, leaving her as they found her, an integral and bizarre part of the scene. She lay stretched along the baseboard, as if crushed into place. She looked like a player in a hide-and-seek game gone badly wrong. Her feet were bare, with pearly-pink toenails. Leith shone his flashlight toward her face and saw her nostrils were bloody. He could smell urine. A blood-spattered handbag lay on her chest, open, its contents spilled. The woman’s arms were curled up toward her face in an awkward self-hug, pressed into place by the pressure of the sofa back. One hand curled around something shiny — a smartphone.