Dion wasn’t as mystified by Tony’s decision as others seemed to be. When depression hits, the only mystery is how to carry on. Depression may come out of nowhere. It might have nothing to do with what’s in the mirror, or the bank account, or the love life. Depression is an undertow, and unless a person has waded into it, they can’t know the pull.
Someone called out a hello, and Dion turned to see Leith clambering down the difficult path toward him, also bundled like an arctic explorer hitting the icefields.
“Hey,” Leith greeted him, breath gusting out white. “How’s it going?” He passed Dion to check out the awesome view.
Dion thought how almost supernaturally lucky Leith’s presence was. A confrontation between them was overdue, and could there be a more perfect time or place? There being no possible friendly segue that he could think of, he said, “You’ve been tracking me. Why?”
Leith turned from the view and blinked at him. “What? No, I’m doing the rounds of all the —”
“Not now,” Dion said. “This summer. You put a tracker on my car. What’s up? Mind explaining?”
* * *
The drop-off beside Leith was not sheer, but it was decidedly unfriendly. Where he stood now, he realized, one good shove would send him to his death. “You want to go back to my car?” he asked, and used the question as an excuse to walk away from the edge and back toward the safety of the ascending trail.
“Let’s just talk here,” Dion said, not budging.
Leith stopped and jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. He had been about to say a bunch of nice things, like happy new year, congratulations for a job well done, etc. But that wasn’t going to work now. Nothing worked with Dion, and Leith was coming to see how moonlighting as a spy for Bosko was poisoning both their lives.
The tension was getting to him. Alison thought it was the stress of the new posting that was keeping him awake nights. She didn’t know what he was up to, playing detective in the cheesiest way, latching that low-tech tracker to Dion’s car. Foiled, as it turned out. With nothing to go on now, except rumour and Mike Bosko’s vague instructions, Leith had justified to himself that giving up was in order. Until something new came up.
And now something new had, according to Bosko, and the tension would soon be over. But not until Leith had closed this chapter of deceit and betrayal. And since Dion wanted answers and was being blunt about it, maybe this was their chance to do just that.
“I tracked your car, yes. Because you’re a suspect. The investigation hasn’t made the books yet, but it’s going to.”
Dion nodded. “I figured. Bosko, right?”
“Bosko is running it pretty much on his own. He’s got his reasons. He’s had little to go on, so far.”
Dion nodded again. Along the cliffs behind him grew hardy little evergreens, and with every gust of wind the dry snow flailed off their branches, momentary ghosts that danced and scattered. He didn’t seem to feel the cold, his attention riveted on Leith.
“But there’s new evidence,” Leith said. “It’s over, Cal. It’s time to talk.”
“What kind of new evidence?”
“A witness. She’s made contact, agreed to talk to Bosko.”
The words had less impact than Leith was expecting. No gulp, no holy cow, I’m cooked. Dion continued to watch him like a lip-reader waiting for a punchline. But he must be wanting closure as much as Leith did. They both knew that a witness coming forward almost certainly meant there was something to come forward about, and it wasn’t to discuss the weather.
Leith had found himself in the role of hostage negotiator a few times in the course of his small-town RCMP career. He knew about the power of empathy. “You’re tired of running,” he said. “I can feel it. You want to get this off your chest. So talk to me. Better me than a stranger, because I get where you’re coming from, and I care about you. What d’you say?”
Dion looked out to sea as if to consider the offer — but when he turned back to the conversation, he was clearly not bathed in the clean light of absolution. “There’s nothing to tell. I’ve had the feeling Bosko was after me for something, I don’t know what. Something to do with the crash, I’m guessing. Does he think I crashed my car on purpose, got my best buddy killed for some reason? Somehow fixed it that we’d get hit on the passenger side by a speeding car in the middle of nowhere? Kind of bizarre.”
The last thing Leith had expected was a cranky but down-to-earth comeback. There were times when he felt Dion was ready to break, but this was not one of those days. There was also the tempting sliver of a chance that he was telling the truth.
Whatever the truth was, his refusal to spill made Leith’s job easier. Let somebody else twist his arm. And pull the switch, if that’s what it came to. “It’s not what happened in the crash, and you know it,” he said, letting Dion know he was done. “It’s what happened before. But here’s the deal. I’ve given it a shot, and it’s not my case. If you want to keep on keeping on till you’re arrested, best of luck, okay? It’s out of my hands.”
Now they were both looking out to sea in silence. Finally Leith said, “Most people go out of their way to stay out of trouble. Some people stumble into it. But some, like this Scott Mills guy, don’t seem happy unless they’re reinventing it.”
They were back to business, and Dion looked almost grateful, maybe getting the allusion to his own stumble. He listened attentively as Leith related his gut feeling that Dezi and Scott were in the plane game together, that she knew everything about the Gold-Seton plot, that it was her idea to go after Amelia Foster when she defected, her idea to go after Keefer to silence him, and ditto with Gilmartin. Even serial killers seemed to prefer having some kind of goal when they went looking for victims. It upped the ante for them, Leith supposed.
“Are you anywhere close to charging her?” Dion asked.
Leith shook his head. “We have nothing on her. Frey’s keeping her out of the story. So far he’s happy to be the boogeyman, and she’s just a naive girl who hangs around bad men. We can’t prove otherwise. We need something solid on her, something with teeth. Better get back to finding that thing. Coming? I’ll give you a ride back down.”
* * *
Dion followed Leith, thinking that the problem with flying was the falling. Leith’s words had caught him at a bad time, when he was feeling hope. Now he was sinking once more. He was back in the darkness of a gravel pit, shovelling dirt. He paused for breath and turned to see his co-conspirator’s face oddly illuminated. The question continued to nag him. Was Looch talking on his phone? And looking up, there was the girl straddling her dirt bike. To this day anyone with pink hair gave him a jolt.
He had shouted at Looch, watched those tail lights flicker on, a puff of dust as she fled, and he had leapt to life, too, diving for the wheel of his car, Looch falling into the passenger seat that would get him killed moments later. They took up pursuit via the road, didn’t have the advantage of the hills, trying to cut her off.
He should have let her go and faced the consequences. How had he hoped to catch her, and what would he have done if he had?
He hadn’t stopped to think about it. Hadn’t stopped to think, period.
The gravel pit road intercepted an empty byway. Middle of the night, deserted. Trying to predict her path, stepping on the gas. Sudden glare of headlights merging at speed with his own.
The end.
He had woken after a number of weeks, and ever since, he had been waiting for the pink-haired girl to come forward. She never had, apparently. Till now.
Forty-Four
DASHED
BOSKO’S WITNESS STOOD outside the North Vancouver RCMP detachment, chomping gum. The woman was not a teenager, and she had never had pink hair, nor operated a dirt bike. She was a widow, an ex-kinesiologist, and she was here to tell her story. Not today, but tomorrow. This afternoon was a practice run, nailing down the route, because the devil was in the details, and public transit was a plethora of details indeed.
Her name was Brooke. She knew her way around the North Shore well enough, having lived here in the past. She didn’t know the bus routes, though, especially from Burnaby, where she now lived. When Sergeant Bosko had asked where she’d like to meet, she should have chosen somewhere closer to home, but her brain was fragile these days. Slippy and slidey. “Doesn’t matter,” she had said, so he had gone ahead and set up the time and place: a coffee shop not far from the detachment.
Bosko sounded nice on the phone. He had wanted to meet right then and there, but accepted her request for a day or two later. He said he was grateful for her coming forward like this. He sounded like he cared about her well-being, too. He would make everything all right again.
She stood and looked at the building, a sight as painful as every other reminder of what she had lost. Moving east hadn’t helped, and neither had returning west. Nothing helped. What had finally prompted her to make the call, when she was ready to just let it all go? Christmas, that’s what. This was her second Christmas alone, and damned if she would go through another without bringing Cal Dion to justice. Her life could only move on if his was stopped in its tracks.
It occurred to her as she stood staring at the building where Dion continued to work that she might in fact bump into him. Christ! She was turning to rush back to Lonsdale to avoid the unthinkable when somebody called her name. A female voice. She turned to see one of the gang walking along the sidewalk toward her. JD Temple.
She heard herself respond brightly. “JD, hey, how are you?”
Such a natural, commonplace greeting. JD was an enemy, too, if only by association with Dion. JD was now studying her in the casual but observant way of cops. She would be noticing the changes, the lost weight, the Sally Ann clothes, the tangled hair. “I’m good, Brooke. How are you?”
“Surviving.” Brooke forced a grin.
JD had always been sharper than any of the men she worked with. “Were you coming into the detachment? Somebody in particular you wanted to see?”
“Happened to be in the neighbourhood. Just wondering how you’re all doing. How’s Doug?”
Doug Paley had been one of Looch’s best friends on the force. Brooke had seen Doug at the funeral, JD at the funeral, everybody except Dion at the funeral. Doug had seemed grief-stricken, but what did he know about grief? Within days he would have moved on. More like hours, in the fast-paced world of law enforcement. He wouldn’t be stuck in a loop like Brooke was, handicapped by missing parts. Because that’s what Looch was to her: vital missing parts.
JD walked backwards for a few steps, beckoning. “C’mon, then. I’m heading down to Rainey’s. Doug’s already there. Come and say hi.”
“God, no. I don’t want to see Cal.”
JD appeared to understand the aversion. Again, she was a sharp one. “No chance of that. He’s not in today.”
So Brooke ended up in the pub where the crew used to gather when Looch was alive, where she’d join him from time to time. The music was as loud as ever, but now it made her want to cringe instead of get up and dance. She said hello to Doug Paley and Jim Torr, who said hello back to her. It was like nothing had changed. How outrageous! Nothing, except Looch was gone and she was thinner. She asked for a glass of water to keep her hands busy, and tried to calm the whirligigs of panic in the pit of her stomach.
Must stay sober. Chat a while and go. She sipped water, smiling as the men and JD fell into conversation. They were trying to include her, but maybe she had a force field around her that wouldn’t let her out or them in. She knew she made them feel guilty. She knew they wished her gone. They began to ignore her and talk shop, and she began to plan her departure.
As she inched toward the edge of her seat, two more arrived, a heavy-set man and a blonde woman, both in civvies. Brooke almost could name the man, but couldn’t quite. Kevin or Ken. He maybe recognized her, too. Doug was asking her if she still taught or practiced kinesiology. She said she had given up the discipline, too busy working at adjusting to life without Looch. “I can’t seem to get it together,” she said. She raked back her hair and tried to smooth it down. Her hair felt awful, like tangled nylon against her palm.
“We all miss him,” Doug said. He sat too close and gave her arm a squeeze. “Can I get you something stronger than — what’s that watery stuff you’re drinking?”
“Water,” she said, and almost giggled. Doug had always made her laugh. But not like Looch could make her laugh. Where had all the laughter gone?
Doug bought her a highball, and the liquid swirled in her mouth with a heavenly burn. Around her, the conversation became loud and lively. Leaving wasn’t so easy, especially when she found a second drink in front of her. All would be okay if she didn’t mention Looch again, or her plans for tomorrow. She bore through the cops talking about the cop life. The blonde lady cop was already standing, swallowing her beer and heading out. The heavy-set guy also seemed ready to call it a night, wrapping his scarf around his neck, zipping his jacket. It was JD who leaned across the table and asked Brooke again what brought her to North Van, if she was living in Burnaby.
Something about the question rubbed Brooke the wrong way. Mind your own fucking business, Looch’s voice boomed in her head. She said instead in a thin, clear voice, “I’ve come to put away the man who killed Looch, that’s what.”
The table went quiet, and all eyes latched onto her. Now that it was out she felt good. She wasn’t just telling one man in a suit, but the world at large. Double the pleasure, double the damage.
“What d’you mean, Brooke?” JD said.
Brooke sat straighter. “Looch would still be alive if not for him.” The name she could barely think, let alone say. “It’s his fault. He killed Looch.”
“It was an accident,” Doug said, still close, still being a shoulder to cry on.
She didn’t want his damn shoulder. She laughed at his choice of words. “Accident? Killing people in the middle of the night is no accident. It’s murder. Does nobody get it?”
Caution now in all their faces, and doubt. They were listening to her but wondering if she was mad. She poked the air, saying, “He was always bad news, and you know it. How many times have you covered for him? I told Looch, I said, ‘He’s going to get you in deep shit one day. Stay clear of him.’ But he didn’t, and I was right. Look what happened.”
“We loved Looch,” JD said, “and we miss him, but come on, Brooke. Looch and Cal were both yahoos. If they got in trouble, they got in it together.”
Brooke couldn’t believe her ears. “Looch was a good man,” she cried.
But they were banding together now, blocking her. That’s what cops did when one of their own was threatened: create a line and plug their ears, Maintiens le lie. Jimmy Torr and Kevin or Ken were talking now, ignoring her. She raised her voice. “The night Looch died, he phoned me. He was frightened. He wanted to know what to do. You want to know what he said that he and Cal had just done? You want to know what that first-degree, lying piece of garbage got my Looch into?”
JD was watching her with cool interest. Doug Paley asked Brooke if he could call her a cab. Brooke heard herself becoming shrill. She slapped the table and told them, “He didn’t just kill that man. He killed Looch. He killed Looch’s beautiful, happy family. He killed me. He killed the kids we never had. And he’s just carrying on as if nothing happened. It’s not right!”
JD told her not so kindly to get a grip. Instead, Brooke lost her bearings. She looked at Doug, but he didn’t look back. She stood and told the group, “It’s not going away. I’ve made enough calls from pay phones, trying to stay out of it, and nothing happened. So I’m here, in person. Look at me. Tomorrow I’m going to see Sergeant Bosko, and I won’t leave till he does something about this. Get it?”
Their attention came and went, and she could tell they were tuning her out. Just like in her nightmares, she was shouting the truth at people who refused to listen. Ken or Kevin was on his feet, saying good night to Torr. He nodded a
t Brooke and left. Doug Paley asked the waitress for another beer, but didn’t offer a top-up to Brooke. JD asked Brooke if she could give her a ride home, maybe she wanted to talk?
“No,” Brooke said. “No way.” With tears streaming down her face, she made her way toward the exit. With a backward glance she saw the group of three at their table, pretending to be lost in conversation but in fact watching her go. Like a pack of wolves tracking a deer and calculating the rate of return.
* * *
At 10:30 that night Leith got a call that hustled him out of his pajamas, back into his street clothes, and over to the detachment. JD and Dion had also interrupted whatever they were doing to come in for the breaking news. They preceded him to the evidence section to show him what they had. Thomas Frey’s white hatchback had been located.
“So where did they find it?” Leith asked.
“Parked a few blocks away from the Kirk residence,” Dion said.
“But it’s what we found inside that’s going to make your day,” JD said.
Leith studied the upshot of what was found within the vehicle, and JD was right — it made his day. He gave the thumbs-up and sent her and Dion to arrest Dezi. When they were gone, he arranged another chat with Thomas Frey. This time he would find out what really happened the night of Amelia Foster’s crash.
* * *
A change had come over Frey. Leith could only describe him as mellower than mellow, and he saw it as madness descending.
With the new evidence before him, Frey ditched the fairy tale and answered questions openly and honestly. He didn’t seem conflicted about ratting on the love of his life, and Leith understood why: it wasn’t Dezi the human being that Frey cherished, any more than a trophy hunter cherished the gazelle he’d just shot and had stuffed. Dezi was nothing but a hard-on concept to play with in Frey’s mind’s eye. In an abstract way, he had had his way with her and was done. She was a moment in time, smashed like that little red Mazda, unfixable, gone. Frey realized that even if Dezi somehow deigned to visit him in jail sometime down the road, which she wouldn’t, his mask was off, the mystique was gone, and he was exactly what he looked like: a middle-aged nobody.
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