Reports from the medics and jailers said he was behaving well, even now that the painkillers had worn off.
So when, and how, had this schism started?
“We all start out good, then ego comes along,” JD said.
“But this?” Leith indicated the file stuffed with gory photos.
“Mid-life crisis, emotional breakdown, infatuation. No question he’s Grey Man, and he’s got a hard drive full of Dezi pics.”
In any case, Leith pointed out, Frey’s inexperience was advantageous to the interrogation. He was so new at being bad that he’d be a crappy liar, right? JD told him not to count on it. She advised him that if Frey proved uncooperative, Leith could always try using Dezi as a pitchfork.
Leith said he would do that, and arranged to have his prisoner brought in.
* * *
“Well,” Frey began. “I won’t say I regret any of it. That wouldn’t be honest.”
First sentence out of his mouth and already he’s headed for the psych ward, Leith thought.
But he gave a nod of understanding. He and Frey were alone in the softer of the interview rooms, because intimidation wouldn’t do spit with a man like Frey. It was easy does it with this type of madness.
“I never really lived, till I saw Dezi,” the prisoner went on. “I wouldn’t have met her if not for Scott. Scott and I had become friends, in a way. He looked up to me, middle-aged man willing to talk to him, not bully him. You know, a kind of a father figure.”
“I hear you’re popular with the kids in the flying club,” Leith said.
“I understand kids. You don’t push them, and they won’t push back.”
“I see.”
“I didn’t meet Scott in the flying club, actually. I saw him in the field, flying his plane, and he was amazing. What a talent. We talked a bit. Later I saw him again, same park, but now with a young girl, trying to teach her how to fly. I remember it so vividly. The trees, the sun sparkling through the leaves. I think I fell in love with her on the spot, and nothing has been the same since. I was going to go over and talk to them, but changed my mind. I didn’t want to disturb them. I just wanted to … watch. I sat on a bench. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Next week, the same. I didn’t want to break the spell, spoil everything by being introduced.”
“How would that spoil everything?”
Frey looked at Leith as if he was mad. “Look at me. Would you fall for me?”
Definitely not, Leith thought.
“No,” Frey said. “You’d dismiss me, as would she. And after that, I would no longer be able to watch, either, as she’d know who I was. So I refrained. As soon as I could get Scott alone, I asked about her. Was she his girlfriend? He said she was, but I didn’t believe him. He didn’t give off the signals of wanting her, if you know what I mean. Later, he let it slip that he didn’t have feelings for women. Can you imagine?”
“Who did he have feelings for?”
“Nobody. I think he and Dezi were about as platonic as could be. Just friends, at least from her end. As for him, he was probably using her as a prop, so other men would think he was some kind of player.”
Frey inhaled deeply and sat back with eyes closed.
Leith didn’t know where Frey had gone, but he didn’t mind the recess. He glanced at the Mirropane. He couldn’t see JD, but she could see him. “So you fell in love with Dezi. Did you try to talk to her?”
“I didn’t have the nerve.”
“But you followed her, took pictures of her.”
“Oh. You found those, did you?”
“Yeah, we did.”
“Tell Corinne I regret all that,” Frey said. He didn’t look sorry, in Leith’s eyes. “But it was never real, with her. There was no spark. She’ll understand.”
“Sure. I think you went further than stalking Dezi, though. I think you met her. Took off your mask, so to speak.”
“I never took off my mask, so to speak,” Frey said. “I always remained in the shadows. She didn’t know anything about me. Didn’t even know my name. I think in a way she felt my admiration, and enjoyed the mystique, but it never went further than that.”
Leith gave it another push. “You actually had a relationship with her. You had sex, didn’t you?”
Frey seemed to be only half listening. He gave a shudder as he came back to earth. “No, that’s an absolute falsehood.”
Leith could see Frey was struggling to slip back into his incognito wonderland, following pretty girls in his mind, taking them home with him, in the form of photographs, to study at his leisure. Worried that Frey would disappear down that rabbit hole for good, Leith decided he needed to consult with JD. “How about lunch?” he said, cheerfully.
* * *
Leith’s lunch consisted of a sandwich and a speed-read of every statement Dezi had made, followed by a review of the case with JD. They went over the span of events from the van-load of kids plunging into the sea to Frey popping out from under Bosko’s bed with a loaded .45. Was Dezi really standing on the sidelines, or did she have blood on her hands as well?
“The way she snapped at Bosko when he pushed her,” JD said, explaining how her suspicion had shifted to the girl who had once been her friend. “I’m thinking that was her mistake. He pushed her, she snapped at him, and next thing you know, there’s an attempt on his life. And the way she tried to seduce me. She’s a manipulator.”
“And a damn good one,” Leith said.
JD leaned forward. “You know what you’re going to have to do with this guy?” She mouthed the answer, for his eyes only: lie.
Leith was thinking the same thing. He went back to pick up with Frey where they had left off, and it only got wilder.
* * *
“What you’re saying isn’t lining up with what Dezi’s told us,” Leith lied. “So what aren’t you telling me, Tom? How did you end up in Lions Bay blasting holes in people?”
“You’ve talked to Dezi?” Frey’s brows went up, and for a moment Leith thought he wasn’t going to fall for the old ruse, we already know everything, so might as well spill. But the brows went down again, and the shoulders sagged, which either meant Frey had taken the bait after all, or he was changing tactics.
“I’ll tell you what led up to Lions Bay,” Frey said. “But it’s got nothing to do with Dezi, so I’m not sure what she might have told you. Anyway, to begin with, it was all about a car.”
“What car?” Leith asked, though he thought he knew: the sports car Dezi had said Scott was intent on buying from Grey Man.
“Scott’s grandma had a stroke,” Frey said. “And since she could no longer drive her little hot rod, Scott decided she should bequeath it to him, and it was just a matter of convincing her. The problem was, she wasn’t his real grandma. Scott’s mom married a guy named Karl, so Gran was actually a step-gran, and from what Scott heard, she was a cranky old bitch. He figured, probably rightly so, that if he went kowtowing to her, she’d just throw him out on his ear.”
Leith compared what he was hearing with what he knew. Some of it wasn’t matching up. “It wasn’t a car deal you and Scott were making?”
“I had nothing to do with it, except Scott asked for my advice on how to win Grandma over, and I told him the obvious. Be nice. He said his mother gave him the same useless advice, plus something about washing his mouth out with soap. I have to say, she had a point there. He said he wouldn’t know how to begin being nice, and he too had a point. I also told him to stop dressing like a thug, so he put on a nice sports jacket and plaid shirt and went over to see Grandma. But her place was being cleaned and she wasn’t in. This is all stuff he told me later. Then he got talking to the housekeeper who was cleaning the apartment, about cars and birds, and the two of them hatched an idea. It’s a strange one, so hold on to your hat.”
Leith nodded to show his hat was held.
“I never meant to hurt anybody,” Frey said. “It just went so wrong. Scott claims it was the housekeeper’s idea, because there was so
mething she wanted from the old lady, too. This housekeeper —”
Leith interrupted, “You know her name and you know what happened to her, right?”
“Amelia Foster,” Frey admitted, with no sign of regret. “I had nothing to do with her death. And again, I only know about it because Scott told me. As Scott put it, this Amelia person had kind of a boyish look, and she thought herself a bit of a con artist, too. What got her thinking about it all was her resemblance to Grandma’s dead son, which she knew about because there was an old photograph in the lady’s apartment, and she knew a bit of Grandma’s history from other employees. Amelia decided that she could schmooze her way into Grandma’s heart by pretending to be Scott, while more or less channelling the dead son. Do you follow so far?”
Leith said he was following.
“Know how the son died, by the way?” Frey asked.
“No. How did he die?”
“A car crash. How ironic is that?”
“What did Amelia get out of the con?”
“A bird,” Frey exclaimed. “A big blue bird that talked. She had become attached to it and wanted it, was afraid it would go to a bad home after Grandma died. So she wanted the bird, and Scott wanted the car. Two items that a dying woman might easily hand over to somebody who cared about them as much as she did.”
Leith sat back to marvel. The story seemed too strange to be true, yet too strange not to be. So this was all about a car? And a bird? “The plan seemed to be working out?” he asked.
“Better than Scott hoped,” Frey said. He directed a hoot of laughter at the ceiling. “Too good. Grandma adored the imposter, and I guess where it went wrong is the imposter came to adore Grandma. The two of them got along great. They talked about travel, birds, nature, fast cars. One day Amelia broke the news to Scott. First the good news. Bird and car would be gifted to Scott upon Grandma’s death. The old lady had sent a note to her family attorney to avoid any squabbles over it after her demise, stipulating that Scott should get the car. The bird was a more informal gifting. Of course Scott could have the creature, as he clearly loved it.”
Leith waited with interest for the bad news that must have followed the good.
“The bad news,” Frey said, “was twofold. A, Grandma’s prognosis was actually not bad, and she was expected to be driving her Boxter again by autumn, and B, Amelia was done with the gig. She was quitting.” Frey smiled broadly. “I remember the day Scott told me. Early December, over at Deer Lake. He was bombing his plane around to blow off steam. I said, ‘Well, at least the car will be yours, somewhere down the road. But he was afraid. If Amelia went to the authorities, he could end up in jail.”
Frey sat for a moment in thought, and for the first time became serious. “Things just got away from me. Scott had set up a meeting with Amelia out at Porteau Beach, where he would try to convince her to carry on with the scheme and not rat him out. But he was too angry to deal with her. He wanted me to do it. I took the request at face value. I had no inkling of what he had in mind, lying in wait with his plane to frighten her off the road.”
“So is that what happened?” Leith asked.
“Believe it or not, I do believe that’s what happened. I met Amelia at Porteau, and tried to reason with her. She told me to go to hell, and she left. Scott intercepted her, and she crashed her car. At least that’s what I take from what he told me on the phone soon afterwards.”
“Why would you do all this for Scott? What did you get out of it?”
“Ah,” Frey said. “Scott and I had struck up a deal. I loved Dezi, and I had come to see that Scott was no good for her. He was going to drag her down with him. I said I would do this favour for him if he cut off his friendship with her.”
“So you played the negotiator with Amelia in order to save Dezi from Scott’s influence, is that your story?”
“That’s right. Turns out Scott was not only foul-mouthed and corrupt, but a liar and murderer, and he had no intention of cutting off Dezi as promised.”
Leith had a map of the Sea to Sky on the table, and he placed a finger on Porteau Beach, north of Lions Bay and north of the spot where Amelia had crashed. “You went there alone, did you?”
“I did.”
“Dezi was there, too, though, wasn’t she?”
Frey ogled him. He cleared his throat, and his eyes darted around the room. When he was done looking for an alternate story, he heaved a sigh and nodded. “It was a night of surprises. I didn’t expect Dezi to follow me. I also didn’t expect Amelia to be so nasty about it all when I showed up instead of Scott. She told me she wouldn’t let us defraud Grandma, and she started to march back to her car. I phoned Scott to let him know I had failed. He said something about heading her off at the pass, and then he hung up on me. I didn’t know what he meant.”
“Why did Dezi follow you?”
“I don’t know. She’s Scott’s friend. Maybe she worried that he was getting in too deep. Which he certainly was.”
“And what happened after Amelia fled?”
“Dezi left, and I left. We came upon the crash, and this was moments after it happened, I assume. I had seen lights veering in the distance, followed by a bunch of flashing. We both pulled over. Dezi jumped out of her car. Neither of us knew that was Amelia down there. You couldn’t see the crash from the road. I stayed in my car, but she ran to help. As I was sitting there, Scott phoned and told me what he had done, that he had successfully driven Amelia off the road. He asked me what was happening. I told him people had stopped, were down there helping Amelia. I said Dezi had gone down, too, trying to help out. As we were on the phone, I saw a man climb out of the ditch and get into his car. I advised Scott, and he said I should follow the man, find out if Amelia had said anything to him. And I did. I followed him all the way to Horseshoe Bay.”
“Why obey an order like that?” Leith asked, working to keep the anger out of his voice, anger at the image he couldn’t get out of his mind: Rory Keefer tied to a tree, covered in blood.
“Because for the first time in my life, I was enjoying myself.” Frey said it with a flare of vicious delight that made Leith want to hit him. “Because I wanted to show the world what I was capable of. Because I didn’t want Dezi to suffer for Scott’s crimes, and I knew one way or another he would pull her in. All kinds of reasons. That’s why. This was the turning point in my life. This was real.”
“And Dezi was going to thank you after you were done? Was that the idea?”
Frey ignored the question, perhaps because he had no answer, and went on with his confession. “I followed the man to Horseshoe Bay, and found him talking on a pay phone. It was a dark, secluded place, middle of the night. Nobody could see. When he turned around, I hit him with the Maglite I keep in my car. Scott arrived in his truck, and we loaded the man into the back. I left my car in the ferry parkade and then drove the man’s vehicle and dumped it behind the Superstore. From there I walked home. The next day Scott picked me up. The man was in the back of his truck, still kicking. We went to the Maplewood forest, and we took him into the woods, and we killed him.”
Just like that, Leith thought. “And why?” he asked again.
Frey lifted his face. “For Dezi. Everything I did, I did it for Dezi.”
“You killed Scott. How does that help Dezi?”
Frey snorted. “Isn’t it obvious? He was murdering people. He was trouble. He was leading her down the path to hell and he wasn’t keeping his end of the deal. She’d end up in jail, if she kept hanging around that guy. I had to get him out of the picture.”
“And Scott’s parents?”
“I killed them, too, because they got in the way. I killed all of them. Just couldn’t get that fucking little dog.”
* * *
In the long meeting that followed, everyone agreed that woven through Frey’s story was a stinking trail of bullshit. But to Leith, a truth came through the narrative as well. What wasn’t being said spoke louder than words, like a negative space, like a void pa
ttern in blood spatter. Like an object that had been present through the violence but since removed. In spite of the tangled story and Frey’s clumsy attempts at obfuscation, the truth was plain to see. It was a thrill kill team, and young Dezi Novak was at the controls.
Forty-Three
FALLEN
January 3
DION WORE BOOTS, jeans, sweater, parka, and a toque to protect his ears. He had just reached his destination: high above the world, the snowy plateau overlooking the Burrard Inlet that Looch had brought him to in the past. He hadn’t approached via Fellridge today, but from Lions Bay below, in his role as guide to the Forensics members who were searching and photographing Scott Mills’s ledge. Dion had driven with them up from Lions Bay as far as the rough spur would take them, as Mills would have done. They had then climbed on foot from its dead end to the killing ledge. A different trail, same destination, and a far easier and faster route than from above.
He had left Forensics out of sight below and climbed the rest of the way, for the sake of the view. He wanted to take another look, now that he was still feeling the lift of Kate’s renewed friendship and Bosko’s gratitude. He wondered if he would get a rejuvenated thrill in this new state of being.
When he’d recovered from the exertion of the climb, he looked out to sea. An uneasiness crept over him. The happiness and sense of reawakening wasn’t flooding into him, as he’d expected. Far below, the ferries continued to carve their routes between terminals as if nothing had changed. The glob of pale sun overhead was only a halo in the clouds, and he felt no redemption. Not even a flutter.
He thought about Souza’s jump. A mystery, everyone said. So young, so healthy, so good-looking. His whole life ahead of him. Why couldn’t he just speak up, reach out for help?
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