“Probably not. It’s from a notebook that was in a box of documents recovered from Jackie Randall’s apartment. It seems to be related to the Breanna Ferris hit and run, but I could be wrong.”
“Hmm.”
“I’d kind of like to know what Randall was up to,” Bosko said. “Especially in light of this.” He next placed a mini recorder on the desk. “Have a listen and see what you think. No, not here. Take it with you. Just keep it to yourself for now. Okay? Thanks.”
The meeting was over. Leith picked up the recorder and went to his desk to listen. It seemed Bosko had recorded a conference of some kind. Dion was there, being commended, then questioned, and sounding like humble pie. And though the conference started off low-key and friendly, the key changed fairly fast. With Dion in there, how could it not?
* * *
Dion sat in the lunchroom, eating and thinking. The conversation between himself and Corporal Montgomery in the meeting room the other day, once everyone else had left, had been surprisingly productive. A great weight had been lifted off his shoulders, by the end of it.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Montgomery had told him. “I was under a lot of stress. Tori told me Jackie had come around, accusing her of things — running over Breanna Ferris on Halloween — and by implication, accusing me of trying to bury the case. Tori didn’t want to tell me, so as not to upset me, but in the end she did. I was shocked. But I’m a civilized man. I knew I could talk to Jackie, off the record, and set her straight. But of course, I never got the chance. Why did I take it out on you? Jackie had just been brutally murdered, and so her accusations were left up in the air. You and Jackie seemed close, so I imagined you were going to take up where she left off. I should have just talked to you about it, instead of blowing up. Again, I’m really sorry. I don’t usually lose my head like that.”
His apology seemed genuine. His blue eyes were kinder than ever. Dion had taken the conversation home and mentally gone over his own suspicions, along with every interaction he had had with Jackie and every change he had witnessed in Montgomery’s behaviour. What he was left with was no evidence, and a perfectly believable explanation from the man he had unfairly suspected.
Instinct, he thought with disgust. It was something he had, but something he could no longer trust. It wasn’t instinct that had led him to Starkey’s door, as people seemed to think when they clapped him on the back, telling him what a great sleuth he was. It was a fluke.
At the end of his detailed introspection, he had come to the conclusion that he had been right all along, that Tori had not been driving through Sunset Boulevard that night, and Montgomery had not covered up the crime.
In fact, the next time he had seen Montgomery in the hall, they had chatted in a friendly way. Even agreed to go grab a drink later. The end result was that the whole hit-and-run/cover-up thing was officially checked off in Dion’s mind as so much premium-grade bullshit.
Now he was just waiting for the depression to lift. Why it was still hanging around, he didn’t understand. Probably it was Jackie Randall’s death by werewolf. Or maybe it was the one question he couldn’t answer — why the hell had she been in the Mesachee alone that night?
Leith walked into the lunchroom with an armload of books. He got himself a coffee, came over, and said, “Mind if I sit?”
Dion smiled. “Please. I was waiting for a chance to thank you for saving my life.”
“Hey, no problem.”
“I would have been toast, for sure.”
“Or a dog’s breakfast,” Leith said.
There was something different about him today, and it took Dion a moment to figure out what it was — reading glasses, gold-framed and smart-looking. “What are you studying there?”
Leith removed the glasses with a sigh. “Trusses, and what to do about them. The first thing I discover crawling up in the rafters is one whole section has to be replaced. But it was all on the disclosure form, and I opted out of an inspection, didn’t I? It’s nothing less than I expected.”
“What trusses?” Dion said.
Leith told him about a house he had bought. Hadn’t moved in yet, but he was getting prepped for some hard work.
“Cool,” Dion said, and waited for Leith to open his truss book and get on with it.
But Leith was ignoring his manuals. He was slumped back in a casual way that rang alarm bells in Dion’s mind. The slump was out of place, artificial. It was a means to an end.
“There’s something I wanted to ask you about,” Leith said. “In a meeting last week, I hear you had a few things to say about Michelin Montgomery.”
Dion’s appetite vanished, and he pushed aside the remains of his sandwich. “I did,” he said. “But that’s over. I apologized.”
Leith ignored him. “You said Jackie Randall was digging into his handling of the Breanna Ferris case. You also said he assaulted you. He’s already put it on the record that Jackie was accusing Tori of the hit and run. He didn’t tell us she was accusing him of covering it up. I want to go over all that with you, get your version, in full. I also want to know more about this assault.”
“Forget about it. Jackie was a workaholic. If there wasn’t enough crime in her life, she made stuff up. I fell for it myself, for a while. But for all her investigations, she didn’t come up with a shred of proof. As for the assault, there wasn’t one. It was a discussion. We sorted it out. It’s history.”
Leith sat looking at him cynically. “What you said in that meeting was he shoved you against the wall and told you he was collecting evidence that would destroy your career. You also accused him of wanting you dead.”
“Blacklisted,” Dion said.
“Dead, actually.”
Dion could feel the heat rising to his face. His depression was back, arm in arm with its mates, fear and anger. “How do you know all this? Who recorded the meeting? And who gave you the recording?”
Leith pointed at Dion’s plate. “Eat your sandwich.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then sign off. We’re going for a drive.”
* * *
They wore their warmest, most waterproof clothing for their climb in the Mesachee. The weather was too miserable for even the hardiest mountain bikers, and they found themselves alone in the park. They made it to the site where Jackie Randall had died, and Dion saw that it was unmarked now. Nothing to show for her passing in the midafternoon gloom but a lot of bruised and broken undergrowth.
Leith said, “The bite marks on her throat weren’t clear, but they could be a match to the bite on Troy Hamilton’s arm. Can’t be disqualified, anyway.” He showed Dion the stalk of a plant that had been apparently cut and removed. “There was blood on the thorns that matches Stefano Boone’s blood type. DNA pending, but I’d put money on what the results will be. Also black synthetic fur, same as the tufts found in the Hamilton attack. Over there is where the crowbar was found.”
Dion stared wherever Leith pointed and then, finally, into his eyes. “So you’re saying Corporal Montgomery planted the blood and the fur? What about the bite mark?”
“He had the file. Had access to all the forensics, including photographs. It’s not out of the question to fashion something out of wood, say, that would leave impressions to match Boone’s.”
“That’s crazy.”
Leith shrugged.
Dion turned over the concept in his mind. It was almost too wild to absorb. Not only wild, but crushingly sad. But it was a rush, too, in a way. Hadn’t it been there in his brain all along, from the moment he’d found Jackie dying, like she was whispering in his ear? Go get him, my friend.
“Risky,” he said. “What if Boone could prove he wasn’t here at the time she died?”
Leith had an answer for that, too. “Boone was on the run. When found, he’d probably have a hard time proving where he was or wasn’t. And if you hadn’t come a
long when Jackie was still alive, say she was found a couple of days later, maybe longer — the time of death would’ve been hard to pinpoint with any accuracy. Right? You really fucked it up for him.”
Dion squinted against a strange rain that seemed to hover rather than fall. “You’re sure he did it. Why?”
“Tori’s fender-bender, for one thing.”
“Fender-bender?”
“She hit a lamppost in the Safeway parking lot. Tuesday. Had to get the front end replaced.” Leith pulled out cigarettes and lit one.
“You can’t smoke in the park.”
“This is the Mesachee,” Leith said. “It’s Crown land. You can smoke on Crown land. I think.” After a puff he said, “So there’s the fender-bender. Probably it’s more the way Monty hates you, though. You were stuck in Starkey’s basement, and I was trying to figure out where you were, and he took his sweet time looking for the info I needed.”
“He couldn’t have known I was getting eaten alive by a dog.”
“No. But he couldn’t have known you weren’t, either. It’s just not right, is it?”
Dion thought about it, watching Leith smoke. He knew Leith was an addict, trying to quit. Dion smoked occasionally himself, but could take it or leave it. Looch had smoked notoriously. If the crash hadn’t killed him, the cigarettes would have.
Leith caught his eye and offered the box. Dion declined and said, “So what, that Montgomery hates me? Doesn’t mean much.”
“Why would he hate you, if not ’cause you’re treading on his plans?”
A bird flitted down and landed on a branch overlooking Jackie’s deathbed. Dion thought about how far she might have gone in life, if given the chance. Commissioner, probably. “Any idea where Montgomery was at the time Jackie was attacked? Or where he says he was?”
“I know where he says he was,” Leith answered, “because some of us were talking about it later, about where we were and what we were doing when we got the call. He was at home, Shop-Vaccing his van for an upcoming trip to the Island. He got the call about Jackie on his work phone — and so that will confirm he was where he claims he was — dropped everything and ran. It sounded natural enough when it came up in conversation. Now it reeks of setting up an alibi.”
“If he says that’s what he was doing, then he was,” Dion said. “Those vacuums are loud. He’d have done it on the street, and the neighbours will confirm it. So he figured some way to get here and back, fast. Maybe even left the vac going. Got back in time to catch the call about Jackie.”
“That’s some distance to cover. He borrowed a car? Rented one under a false name?”
“Bicycle.”
Leith finished his cigarette, then started up the track. “This way. Signs of passage. Careful.”
Dion avoided a back-thwack of branches and followed him. Five minutes of climbing brought them to another point of interest. This was a path delineated through the underbrush, more sparse than it would be in summer, leading up and out of sight. Leith said, “It’s the blood drop trail. You can’t see any prints now, but there was evidence of bike treads and boots leading up and down from here. If you’re fit, a fifteen-minute hike will get you up to Lynn Valley Road. A lot faster if you’re good on a mountain bike.”
“Does Stefano Boone have a mountain bike?”
“He doesn’t have any kind of bike, that we could find.”
Dion crouched to study the ground. “The path’s been examined all the way up?”
“All tracks charted and photographed, and a few plaster moulds.”
Dion fiddled with his phone, set the timer, then started on the path, scrambling up a muddy natural staircase of rocks and roots. Leith followed. When they stood on Lynn Valley Road, catching their breath, Dion read out his stopwatch results. “Eleven minutes.”
Leith was still catching his breath, and said nothing.
The street was quiet, not a soul in sight, except in the distance, a figure cycled around a bend in the road and disappeared. Dion was revving with excitement by now. The case was shaping up. He said, “He set up his Shop-Vac scenario. He lured Jackie to a meet in the park, and jumped on his bike. It would have to be his mountain bike, to get down through the trails. He’d have a lot of options, cutting through from Seymour Heights to Lynn Valley. Finding Jackie and dealing with her, maybe add twenty minutes. It’s possible.”
“I’m hung up on Jackie. How did he lure her out here? Call her up, say, Hey, I’ve got something to show you? She wouldn’t fall for anything like it. Meet in the woods with a man you’re trying to destroy? Unlikely.”
Dion thought it was more than unlikely — it was unthinkable. There had to be more to it, and he wondered aloud if Linnae Avenue could be the answer.
“Linnae Avenue, what’s that?” Leith said.
As they returned to the Headwaters parking lot — it was even more difficult going down than up — Dion told Leith about the mysterious clue left behind by Jackie Randall.
Forty-Two
METAMORPHOSIS
Leith was back to business as usual. He was kept in the loop, though, as the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team burrowed deeper into Montgomery’s last days and nights. It was a detailed burrowing, carefully conducted so as not to tip him off.
IHIT kept Leith in the loop, and Leith in turn informed Dion. The Breanna Ferris and Troy Hamilton files were turned inside out. Monty’s access to exhibits, every phone call, every text, every memo, was studied. Phone records from the night of the hit and run showed he had received a call from a number that didn’t belong to Tori; it turned out to be a throwaway phone, a burner. The call had come within the time-of-death estimate in Breanna Ferris’s autopsy report.
Monty’s neighbours were interviewed. The time he was home, vacuuming out his van, and the times he could have slipped away were all nailed down. He would have had to take a different vehicle, since the van and Tori’s Acura remained parked at the house at all times.
His window of opportunity seemed impossibly short, until IHIT members considered the man could have swapped bikes, relay fashion. The swifter street bike would have shaved minutes off the trip from Seymour Heights to the Mesachee. The mountain bike might have been stashed in advance, in the bushes at the top of the trail, used, dumped, and later retrieved when the coast was clear. It was another risk that Monty might not have taken, had he known he was going to be all but caught in the act.
With the means worked out, Leith expected the rest to fall quickly into place. He did not look forward to the arrest, and the inquiry to follow. It felt like fratricide.
The week after his confidential talk with Dion had been strange, in several ways. The weather was weird in the Lower Mainland. Not yet December, yet a great dump of snow had fallen, putting the city in a panic. Many Lower Mainlanders hardly knew what snow was, let alone how to drive in it. But just as weird, Monty surprised the crew by announcing he and Tori had gotten hitched. Under the radar, so to speak, a civil ceremony solemnized by a Justice of the Peace. No white-gowned, fun-filled affair complete with confetti, cake, and champagne. No speeches, no friends to cheer them on.
Monty claimed the reason was that his dad was terminally ill, and he and Tori wanted to tie the knot sooner than later. It would make Dad happy. “Makes me happy, too,” he told his colleagues, as they doubtfully congratulated him.
“More like means he’s scared,” Leith told Dion in the lunchroom. “Wants to use the spousal privilege clause, limit what Tori has to say in court about what they’re conspiring about. He’s caught a whiff of the investigation. Life as he knows it is over.”
Dion didn’t look thrilled. He said if Montgomery was scared, then he was scared, too. Something was going to break. “When’s the arrest?” he asked.
Double arrest. Tori was getting hauled in, as well.
“Probably tomorrow. I’ll let you know.”
* *
*
Leith couldn’t sleep, and it was Dion’s prediction that something was going to break that kept him tossing. When he arrived at work, and Montgomery was absent, he fetched Dion away from his regular uniformed duties. “Just think it might be a good idea to go check it out,” he said.
Out at the Montgomery home in Seymour Heights, Monty’s van was not in the carport, and Tori’s car was not in the open garage.
“They’ve made a run for it,” Dion said. “Split up and dashed.”
In the picture window of the home across the street, a woman stood looking out. Leith waved at her. She waved back. “Let’s go talk to her,” he said.
They crossed the street. Leith rang the bell and questioned the woman who opened the door. She told them she had seen Tori heading off for her usual morning run, down at the park. On further questioning, she said it was the Headwaters trails that Tori was doing these days. Yes, even in this weather. The Lynn Loop. Where Monty had gone off to, she couldn’t say, but he left about half an hour after Tori, and seemed in a hurry.
“Which way did he go?” Leith asked.
She pointed.
Dion drove and Leith phoned his IHIT contact, letting them know what he was doing and where he was headed. In case there was trouble.
“Probably nothing,” he told Dion.
But down at the Headwaters parking lot, Monty’s van sat, still warm, right next to Tori’s Acura, and suddenly Leith had the feeling it wasn’t nothing after all. “What’s Lynn Loop?”
“This way.” Dion was already heading at a jog toward the footbridge. Leith followed, at less of a jog. Snow beautified the landscape. Whereas it had already melted to light skiffs in the city, it remained thick along Lynn Creek, and patchy up into the trees. He crossed the bridge and saw Dion was already up at the fork in the path, staring northward.
While scrambling up the Mesachee trail last week, Dion had griped to Leith about how out of shape he was. But he wasn’t. Even loaded down with gun belt and its paraphernalia, he was fast on his feet. Leith was puffing down off the bridge and Dion was restlessly waiting, eager to get going. “Loop begins here,” he called, pointing.
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