“Our what?”
“Surveillance van, sir. We’re keeping an eye on the forest.”
“Oh, for the wolves, you mean?”
“Yes, wolves, dogs, anything. We’ve got it covered. So thanks for calling —”
The man stuck in another question, fast. “So you’ll be out to look at my yard, then?”
“I doubt that’ll be necessary. But thanks for the descriptions. It’s on file now, and I’m sure it’ll be helpful.”
“Because —” the voice said, but Leith’s receiver was hitting its cradle.
His brand-new day had already dimmed. He looked up to see Cal Dion heading this way with a manila envelope. “One of the vans got a shot,” he said and handed the envelope over.
Leith activated the voice mail on his desk phone, in case Starboy tried again, and extracted a report from the envelope. He read over the first line or two. “Well, I’ll be skewered.” More than a shot, the document told him. A series, captured last night on an SD card, now loaded onto a flash drive, ready for viewing.
Leith’s wristwatch was telling him JD would be waiting in the foyer by now, and it was time to get on the road. But a few minutes late wouldn’t hurt, and he beckoned to Dion. “Let’s take a look.”
They took the elevator downstairs. Leith received the flash drive from the exhibit custodian and took it into the adjacent viewing room, sat at the monitor, and activated the USB. The photos popped up. Dion pulled up a chair to join Leith in scanning through the images.
They were disappointing. Lots of them, burst mode, all unclear. Definitely a figure, but low resolution, impossible to make out its features. Leith chose the best shot and enlarged it on the screen. “Hold on a minute,” he said. “Looks like … well, damned if it’s not Keith Richards!”
“’Scuse me,” Dion said, taking control of the mouse. He leaned forward, reducing and enlarging the shot until he had the face centred on the monitor. The time-stamp in the lower corner showed 02:32:51. The face in the shot was not much more than a study in smeared contrasts — blobs of shadow where the eyes should be, the vague definition of a cheekbone, a grey smudge of mouth. Long dark hair, dark clothes, dark surroundings, a gleam of light silhouetting the craggy facial structure.
Leith tried the joke again. “Keith Richards, didn’t I say so?”
“No, I know who it is,” Dion said. He had leaned forward to spread his hand on the monitor glass, as though to stop the image from fleeing. “He’s a prep cook. Works at the Greek Taverna.” He screwed his eyes shut, then popped them open again, the excitement on his face illuminated by the monitor. “Steve! I think. Never got his last name. Lives in Lynn Valley. Carpools —”
He stopped cold and looked at Leith beside him.
“Carpools?”
“With one of the witnesses,” Dion said.
He was hiding something now. Too innocent, too casual.
“Not a witness, actually,” he qualified. “But that’s how he came up, through canvassing.”
Leith waited for the most important part, the name of the non-witness, and when it didn’t come fast enough, he snapped, “Well?”
“Jordan, Farah. It happens she works with this man. Steve. I think it’s Steve. I was in there, the restaurant, and she was there, too, she’s a cook, a chef actually, at the Greek Taverna, and she pointed him out to me.”
“Why did she do that? Did she suspect him of something?”
“She carpools with him.”
“Which you’ve said. So she was just pointing out and naming people she carpools with, is that how it went?”
“It came out in small talk.”
“You’re sure that’s him.”
Dion had another look at the screen and was less thrilled by the image. “I’m not sure. I was certain it was him, at first glance, but now … I don’t know.”
Leith sighed and once again checked the time, which wasn’t standing still for him. “Let’s try and get some details,” he said, shutting down the computer. “Go and charm this carpoolee’s full name and address out of Ms. Jordan, then. I’m off to Mission to see a Mr. Battar. See you later.”
* * *
Dion was worrying about the assignment he had just brought upon himself. If he hadn’t blurted out about the carpooler, which led inevitably to Farah, but had simply written up a report, chances were he could have glossed over the details, and he wouldn’t be here now, tasked with having to contact her.
Yes, he wanted to contact her again, but not like this, and not yet.
He still blamed the wolf. He had overreacted to the animal standing in the shadows of that storage room — well, not standing, but crouched in an attack stance so realistic it had frozen his blood, a stark reminder of life’s perils.
Farah’s passion for wolves worried him, too, and the fact that she hadn’t gotten rid of her father’s guns was the last straw. But firearms infractions were a mistake many in her position could easily make. He shouldn’t have panicked. He should have been nicer about it all. Should have explained what was wrong instead of shutting her out.
It didn’t have to be the end. In fact, calling her about the employee would be a good excuse to talk. He would start out with an apology, ask to come over. Maybe if he brought flowers, she would lay her palm against his face, as she had that night, as if touch was an important part of understanding something, as if he was worth trying to understand. But whether she forgave him or not, it was time to stop dithering. He had to ask the question about the prep cook. He took phone in hand, pulled in a deep breath, and thumbed out the number.
But he didn’t reach her, so had to leave a message.
He expected she would get back to him shortly. Oddly enough, though, she didn’t.
Twenty
CHILL
Dion stood in the detachment’s high-traffic main corridor, mission unaccomplished. He had tried calling Farah several times, both her home and work numbers. Next he would have to go to the Taverna itself, or call the owner, make inquiries about an employee named Steve. Except now he had his heart set on talking to Farah directly. Talking to Farah had become imperative.
He was still standing undecided in the corridor when the phone on his belt chirped. It wasn’t Farah returning his calls, but Jackie Randall, a voice he had begun to dread. She was off duty, but hard at work, as always. She asked how he was. He said he was fine. She asked if he could meet her at the MacKay Creek Greenbelt, through which Sunset Boulevard ran, when he was free. Say in half an hour?
The Breanna Ferris hit-and-run scene. Had she found something?
“Why?” Probably she was just being dramatic, pitching her cause. She’d make him stand by the shrine of flowers, where he would feel the full impact of the child’s death. Staff walked by on either side, himself an island in a stream, talking on the phone to a potential whistleblower. “It’s your case, not mine,” he said. “I’m not making any claims. I didn’t see anything.”
“You saw everything except the hit itself,” Randall said. “You’re what I would call the prime witness.”
“Your prime witness is Michelin Montgomery. Ask him.”
“You know I can’t do that, Cal.”
He moved aside, not to be jostled. “If you’re going to investigate, make it official. Open a file and subpoena me. Whatever you want. Or send it to the top and let the white shirts deal with it.” Though that would lead to an internal investigation by the last official body on the planet he wanted to face. “Just don’t drag me into it, not like this.”
“Meet me at the site. I won’t drag you into it any further than I have to. Really, I just need a sounding board at this point. Think about it. Looking at the big picture, you don’t actually have much of a choice. You’re like the eyewitness to an MVA, legally bound to remain on the scene. Cal? You there?”
“Fuck,” he said.
On S
unset, at the mouth of the greenbelt, he pulled his cruiser behind what had to be Jackie Randall’s car, a shiny black Volkswagen Golf with a small Bart Simpson doll suction-cupped to its rear window. He left his vehicle and walked ahead to the Golf. Inside, the blurry figure of Randall gestured that he should sit next to her in the passenger seat.
“Hello there,” she said, as he pulled the door shut. Off duty, with her rosy cheeks and wire-rimmed glasses, she looked deceptively harmless.
The engine idled, windshield wipers slapping, radio tuned to CBC. The woodsy section where Breanna had been struck was ahead of them, out of sight behind trees. The road was narrow there, nowhere to safely pull over, but Dion had driven past earlier. He had seen the crime scene tape was gone now, and in its place was a cross and a garland of weatherproof faux flowers, mostly pink. Flowers and cross had seemed to glow in the half light as he had driven past at a slow thirty klicks.
“I’m putting myself back at the scene,” Randall told him. She was looking ahead to the dark, winding road, connecting with the dead. “Halloween night. I’ve been rereading all the reports. I did up a timeline there, too, if you want to take a look.” She indicated a notebook wedged between seat and console, a cheap, well-worn school tablet with buff cover. Dion made no move to pick it up. Didn’t need to.
“It was a cold night,” Randall said. “But not frosty. Raining, but only lightly. The road’s unlit. Traffic would have been light, almost non-existent, this time of year, that time of night. Right?”
Some vehicles had passed them as they sat, but only a few. This wasn’t an artery to anywhere. Dion agreed that traffic on Halloween night at that hour would have been almost non-existent.
Randall had her radio playing quietly, an orchestral piece of noise that sounded like Tori’s whatsit — the multi-faceted, incredibly complex whatsit. Gershwin. The skies were bruised with the purples of dusk. Randall gestured at the roadway as a car flashed past. “Did you see what he was doing? How do you slow them down?”
Dion had not come here to talk about traffic control. Nor to lend encouragement to Randall’s conspiracy theories. Just the opposite. “Tori was in Richmond,” he said. “Going home to Seymour Heights. She wouldn’t be anywhere near here. It’s not even close to her route.”
Randall nodded. “I realize that. But I’ll tell you something now, as my partner. Tori likes her pot, and I know for a fact she’s tried a toot or two.”
“How do you know? Are you tooting and toking along with her?”
“Hell, no. But she told me so.”
“Why would she tell you so?”
“Like I said, we were classmates. We were like this.” She twined two fingers, symbolizing inseparable love.
“I thought you went to school and played some hockey together,” Dion said. “You never said you were best friends forever.”
Randall ruffled her ginger hair and glared at him, and though Dion would never admit it to anyone, he thought she was prettier by far than Monty’s fashion model fiancée. “Would you just listen?” she said. “I’m talking big picture here, relationships, habits, secrets. Does Monty know about his angel’s bad habits, d’you think?”
“How could I possibly know?”
“I doubt it. Oh, and she also loves fast cars and driving. Throw that in the pot. And here’s my personal opinion, for what it’s worth. And it’s worth quite a bit, because I know her pretty good. Like I said, in hockey, you get to know your teammates. Especially after the game, when everyone’s had too much to drink and speaks their mind. You know what I mean?”
Dion had played beer league baseball. He knew what she meant.
She said, “I think Tori didn’t want to go home to that party that night. It’s more Monty’s crowd than hers. Too many grey hairs.”
“Tori’s got nothing against grey hair. In fact, she digs grey hair. She’s marrying a guy twice her age.”
“I’m getting to that. Just between you and me, Tori made a mistake. She might have found Monty exciting at first, him being a decorated cop and a globetrotter, all that. But familiarity breeds contempt. He’s just another guy, warts and all, and he’s at least one generation too old for her. And if he found out she likes to smoke it up, he would put a stop to it.”
“It’s no longer the worst crime in the books.”
“But it’s still hugely immoral, in some spheres. Then there’s Tori’s insatiable need to be idolized. However much Monty adores her, he’s also got an all-consuming career, which means she’s not his be all and end all. All this adds up to regret on her end. Maybe she’s wondering how to tell him the engagement is off. Maybe that night she took a detour to think it over. Right?”
Dion burst out laughing at Randall’s growing list of maybes. “You know what I think?” he said. “You should find another hobby.”
“Yes, I will,” she snapped. “As soon as I take a look at Tori’s car.”
“And how are you going to arrange that?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Don’t. There’s no proof, because it didn’t happen. And even if there was any, it’ll be gone by now. All you’ll do is trash your own career. Believe me.”
They both watched the road, silent now. “There’ll be a dent at least, and you know it,” she said. “I swung by their house a couple times, hoping to find the car out and viewable, but of course it isn’t. It’s been either removed or locked up in the garage. In fact I’ll bet my right arm the dent’s already been fixed. Under the table, of course. No records. Amazing, though, what can be dug up. Nothing is really deleted, these days.”
Dion crossed his arms. Randall relaxed sideways in her driver’s seat, observing him as he observed the world through the windshield. He pictured her car and his as they stood currently, pulled over facing the road where a white crucifix with pink weatherproof flowers stood spiked in the grass. If Montgomery drove by right now — unlikely as that might be — he would see them here, recognize the cars, figure it out for himself.
Or maybe he already had it figured out. It seemed his friendliness had dimmed over the last couple of days. Still all smiles, still effusive, showing his teeth when passing in the halls. But it wasn’t the same. There was a distance to him that hadn’t been there before.
“So,” Randall said. “What next? Am I on my own, or do I have your support?”
“I’ll sleep on it.”
“You know what they say about cold trails.”
“I know what they say,” he said.
“You think I’m crazy, but don’t brush me off. I have a strong, strong feeling about this. We can’t have cops covering up crimes. It’s just the worst. Don’t you agree?”
She was asking the wrong person. If she only knew how wrong. He kept his bitter reply to himself. Yes, we’re the worst.
After a beat, she said, “I’m going to go find out what’s with her car, even if it means confronting Tori. What d’you think? Will I find anything?”
A slight child like Breanna, hit at the very end of a long, screeching skid, low velocity by the time car and body made contact … Dion was afraid the dent may not be obvious, or even visible. A recently replaced hood or fender would be more telling than anything, and Randall was right, forensics would be able to say if repairs had been done, even if the records were buried miles deep. Probably for just that reason the dent would not be fixed, but covered for with some impossible-to-disprove explanation.
Still, if forensics ever got the case in their hands, if it ever went that far, the secret could be out — and what a mess it would be. Hit and run was a serious crime, but a cover-up by an RCMP member was unforgiveable.
He could laugh at Jackie all he wanted, but it didn’t stop him from wondering if she was right. What if she was, and what if by some miracle she managed to prove it? Montgomery’s career would be over.
But she wouldn’t prove it. All s
he would accomplish was a stirring up of trouble for all involved, including himself. Definitive proof — no. There would be an investigation, suspicion, backlash, dropped charges, and heads would roll.
“Find something?” he said. “Oh, I’m sure you will.”
Twenty-One
CREVASSE
Where have I gone wrong? The harder I seek the door, the further out of reach it becomes. I can see in the dark, but my daytime vision is weakening. I am getting heavier, not lighter. The boots aren’t working.
Stefano had begged off sick, and he wasn’t faking it. A body could take only so much battering from within, the endless push and pull, the shifting of atoms. Midmorning, and he was in the Headwaters park, on the far side of the river from the Mesachee. He was not on the network of trails, but deep in the thorny region above where most humans ventured. Fog hung in the treetops, and the world through his eyeholes appeared shadowy, cold, and pungent. Not that he could smell it — all he got when he sniffed was the synthetic interior of the mask. Paint, glue, polyester, and on top of that, his own unpleasant breath. He was sweaty, but the cold seeped through his fur and long johns and left him shivering.
Unbearable. He unzipped his throat and pushed back his head. It flopped heavily between his shoulder blades and dragged the front of the bodice up, cinching his groin and almost throttling him. He tugged the fur back into place.
Stefano was trying to get back to the higher reaches of the mountain, but they seemed impossibly far. He hadn’t made it to the top in years. The first time was a few months after Anastasia’s fall. He had been fourteen, and wanting to be dead. The accident had changed everything. Destroyed a happy family and put his little sister, math whiz and future concert pianist, into the darkest place imaginable, with no way out. And all because she had hopped and skipped after him in his explorations of the exciting wilds behind their new home. Down into the forest, following intriguing paths, climbing the rocks along the creek, the two of them leaping barefoot from surface to surface — he could still feel the heat on the soles of his feet — but Anastasia …
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