Crazy. Dion hugged himself, and thought about Melanie, who he had come so close to calling last night, because he missed her. He had convinced himself that maybe with Melanie there was a chance to build something out of the carnage. But a memory kicked in, stopping him cold. The clock on the mantelpiece at the York home. That was one timepiece Jon had no chance to rig, yet it had been rigged all the same. He recalled that day, clearly, looking at the clock face, noting the time, habitual from years of note-taking. The clock jived with all the other lies. So who had turned back its hands? Guess.
And if she had done that, lied to his face, what else had she participated in?
He didn’t believe her role was anything deep or malicious. Probably she was only doing her husband’s bidding, and probably she didn’t have a clue what it was all about. But later, hadn’t she guessed? He wouldn’t report her, but he wouldn’t get in touch with her either, for anything.
His phone rang. It was Doug Paley, wanting him to get down to Rainey’s, on the double.
“Why?”
“Because we’re here cursing ourselves soundly, and we need help.”
Good enough. Dion thrust the phone in his pocket, said goodbye to the emerald waves, and left the beach for his car.
He learned, as he took a seat at the crowded table at Rainey’s, why they were cursing themselves. Because Oscar Roth had killed Oscar Roth, that’s why, a truth which snapped into place so ridiculously well that they needed to get drunk, fast.
“We should have seen it,” JD said. “Oz killed himself and set it up like a murder so the insurance would pay out. We’re Keystone Kops, is what we are.”
“We oughta be issued a new uniform,” Doug Paley agreed. “Rubber billy clubs and long, flat shoes that patter when we run.” He reached over and ruffled Dion’s hair consolingly, because Dion had learned he wasn’t going to get off so easy for his insubordination. This morning Bosko had informed him that sorry, it was beyond his control. Back down to the general duties pit he was going, gun, uniform, and street patrols, for the foreseeable future.
“Well, all the same, how could we know how crazy this Oscar guy was?” Sean Urbanski asked. He looked more biker than ever today, and now Dion knew why. Not an incipient identity crisis, but a perfectly healthy unit transfer. Sean was moving to Surrey to take part in undercover operations. Dion didn’t want Sean to leave, but that was how it went. People transferred in, and then they transferred out.
Leith was coolly answering Urbanski’s question. “How could we know Oz was crazy? Maybe because everyone kept saying so?”
“’Course that snort of coke didn’t help,” Paley said.
“Yeah, Doug, you really gotta cut down on the white stuff,” Urbanski remarked.
There were more jokes along that line, and some laughter, until JD spoiled it with her crabby morality. “One life, just one puny life you get, and you want to fuck up your brain with drugs. I just don’t get it. Even this,” she held up her beer. “Even this is stupid.”
Leith had a question for Dion. “Any chance you recall why you suspected Jamie? Without that heads-up, I’m not sure we’d have squeezed a confession out of her.”
“You’ve got Oscar’s note,” Dion pointed out. “That would have done it, without my heads-up.”
“Not necessarily. Oscar’s note could have been Oscar covering his own ass. And you didn’t answer my question.”
Dion finally had an answer to that question. He had found it only this morning, as he stood on the narrow deck of his apartment, looking at his view of branches. “Jamie and I were talking,” he said. “I asked her if she had taken anything from the Mahon home after the crime. She drew a blank, just for a moment, and I could see her thinking. Then she recalled it, but only because it was in the news, the missing bootie, and she’s a quick thinker, and she’s smart. She said yeah, she took the bootie. I almost didn’t catch it. But in that moment, bang, I knew I’d got it the wrong way round. She was the one we were after.”
“And Oscar was the ogre with a heart,” Leith said. “And then he couldn’t live with himself for what he’d taken part in.”
Or live with what his girlfriend was doing with his best friend, Dion thought. Because Oscar had known. One way or another, he had figured out what this friendship was really worth.
Epilogue
Twist
Leith loaded his long-handled shovel into the bed of his Tacoma under bleak afternoon skies. No more rental car, no more bachelor suite. He had his truck back, and his family. He didn’t tell Alison where he was going; she assumed it was work. Which it wasn’t.
He wondered as he sped along how he would explain himself if caught digging holes in an abandoned gravel pit in the middle of nowhere. He would flash his ID, say it was police business, and whoever was harassing him would hopefully buzz off and leave him alone. If worst came to worst, and that person reported him as a suspicious trespasser to the Surrey RCMP — whose toes he would be treading on — he would just have to tell Bosko everything and hope Bosko bailed him out. What if Bosko only raised his brows and looked surprised?
It was a terrible thought that he decided to forget. For now.
Leith almost missed the turnoff to the Pacific Highway. A plane passed overhead, another jumbo jet lowering belly-first into Richmond’s YVR. Further out, another sailed off to some other key city. Soon Melanie York would be on one of those planes, maybe already was. Down to South America — he’d forgotten the specifics, but had it on file — to teach disadvantaged children the valuable art of everything. She had taken Dallas with her, along with the new toy horse Melanie had bought for her.
Leith had asked Melanie how Dallas was accepting the replacement toy, and the answer surprised him. “She doesn’t like it,” Melanie told him. “She puts it aside. She’s still in mourning.”
Ironically, the fact that Dallas mourned her lost horse somehow cheered Leith. Her mourning meant that within her impenetrable skull was a regular human being, which meant she might one day emerge and be part of the world. He also learned she had spoken a word, as she lay recovering in her hospital bed, to Melanie.
Leith guessed what the word was, but asked all the same.
“Horse,” Melanie quoted, with a shine in her eye.
Strange woman. She had sobered up and looked about ten years younger, as if maybe the end of her marriage was the best thing that could have happened to her. That she was leaving bothered Leith, with so many questions unanswered. Some people fought to the bitter end to stay home; others fought to leave. Melanie was unequivocal, and there was nothing he could do about it.
The wheels of his Tacoma hit the on-ramp, taking him southwest on the dead-straight highway to Cloverdale. He worried about the logistics, which were easier to deal with than the bigger question of why.
What if he found nothing? All he would have proven was that he might not be digging in the right places. The gravel pit was huge, with a dozen eroding hills and valleys intertwined with dirt-bike paths and overgrown with weeds. A body could be buried anywhere, and he would need a crew and a week of man-hours to properly excavate it.
On the other hand, with the little information he had, he suspected the event had been unplanned, followed by a hasty burial, somewhere on the flat grounds where the trucks had come and gone in the years before the gravel pit finally locked its gate and posted its Re/Max sign. He guessed that he could further narrow down the spot to somewhere close to where Dion had parked his car, according to the tracker device. Which gave him at least an X for a starting point.
About a year had passed. Would the dirt have recompacted itself by now? Wouldn’t local dogs have dug up a shallow grave? Maybe not. Maybe the two men — he assumed Luciano Ferraro was a partner in crime — had dumped the body into an existing crevice, then loaded dirt on top. Maybe they’d had time to bury it deep enough so its smell wouldn’t attract scavengers.
&
nbsp; What he would do was take his shovel and tease the soil here and there, check if any earth was looser than the rest. That was all.
Would that ease his conscience?
Probably not.
Worry was making him speed. He eased off to eighty.
What if he should find disturbed earth? Would he dig deeper? At what point would he stop and take it to the authorities? Who were the authorities? What would Bosko do with the information?
Which brought him finally to the why.
“Because I like you,” he said, to his own surprise, and the clouds cleared.
He liked Dion. Or at least cared for him. Dion was in trouble. And if the trouble was as super-sized as Leith was almost sure it was, that meant Dion was going to be caught, sooner or later. Why not take his concerns to Bosko, then? Because he didn’t trust him, and he didn’t trust that man Parker. He didn’t know what kind of tricks a man like Parker might pull, but he had a feeling it might hurt worse than a leghold trap. If anyone was going to catch Dion, he wanted it to be himself, and when he turned him in, it wouldn’t be to Bosko, but a higher authority, one with no shady hidden agenda.
He turned onto the long, straight road with farmers’ fields on either side, hedges shrill with birds, the rumble of distant machinery, and not much else. Closing in on the crash site, he saw a plume of grit and dust ahead, obscuring the road as though a stampede of wild horses was charging at him. He slowed to fifty, and out of the dust came not horses, but a pair of headlights. A large dump truck roared past, and Leith discovered seconds later where its dust trail led from: the entrance of the gravel pit. He braked and peered to his left. The RE/MAX sign was gone.
The pit had been sold, and the gate stood open.
He drove down the half-kilometre lane and arrived at the marshalling grounds for machinery in the past and machinery in the future. The place was as desolate as ever, but different, and it was one hell of a difference. It sat him back in the driver’s seat as if winded, staring at the scene before him. No people here, no vehicles, just clouds of debris swirling up from a recent dump-load of blast-rock.
Where had the rocks come from? Trucked in from the nearest quarry and stockpiled to sell to local contractors and homeowners. Leith knew something about quarries and pits. Soon the whole plateau would be covered in mounds of this stuff, in varying grades from fine sand to boulders.
He stepped from his pickup to gaze at the grey mountain of crushed rock that had obliterated yesterday’s flat land, just about exactly where Dion had parked his car two weeks ago. A shovel was no longer what he needed. He’d need a stop-work order, for one thing. And an excavator. And a sit-down meeting with IHIT, and a whole ream of warrants. All of which meant it was no longer a private mission. This was the point of no return.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “I just don’t believe it.”
He winced at the sunrays cutting through the billows of rock dust. Before leaving the Pacific Highway he had turned off his phone, to prevent triangulation, to prevent tracking. Which showed just how ambivalent he really was. The temperature dropped suddenly in the gravel pit, like a heavy cold front had just bullied out the warmth. He shivered and returned to his truck. Not until he was crossing the Fraser River did he turn his phone back on and become once again connected to the world. The bridge supports chopped the view as he sped along, creating a fluttery image of his new home territory. He was beginning to feel it, the pull of the Lower Mainland. Strange days were coming, indeed.
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge in a haphazard way today, because the help I have received since publishing Cold Girl is amorphous and amazing. Dundurn did a fabulous job of getting Cold Girl out there to be read. Many people read and many people reviewed and/or took the time to write me personal notes to let me know they loved the novel and wanted more. My thanks go to them especially. Writers at any stage need that vote of confidence.
I have made friends in the writing community, too many to name, all excellent writers who are putting character to B.C. crime and placing its stamp on the world. In particular I’ll just say Noir in the Bar, thank you, all, for those best days and nights on the road! And the good people who ran CUFFED International Crime Festival in Vancouver last March — Alma Lee, Lonnie Propas, Sue Ogul, Irene Lau (accomplice), and writer Robin Spano (panel moderator) — for introducing me to the wider world of writing, all the while making me feel like one of the family.
Thank you to Judy Toews, my up-and-coming crime-writer friend, who read and remarked on Undertow’s first draft, which led to many improvements; to Allister Thompson, editor, for guiding me through some pivotal questions; and to David Warriner of W Translation, many thanks for stepping in to help with some eleventh-hour edits.
Finally, my gratitude goes to the RCMP member who gave me tons of insight and technical advice when I asked. Anything I’ve messed up in that regard is completely my fault!
RMG
Some geography and places in this novel have been treated with some degree of artistic licence, particularly the Royal Arms, which does not exist, except in composite form pulled from memory.
In the Same Series
Cold Girl
R.M. Greenaway
2014 Unhanged Arthur Award for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel — Winner
It’s too cold to go missing in northern B.C., as a mismatched team of investigators battle the clock while the disappearances add up.
A popular rockabilly singer has vanished in the snowbound Hazeltons of northern B.C. Lead RCMP investigator David Leith and his team work through the possibilities: has she been snatched by the so-called Pickup Killer, or does the answer lie here in the community, somewhere among her reticent fans and friends?
Leith has much to contend with: rough terrain and punishing weather, motel-living and wily witnesses. The local police force is tiny but headstrong, and one young constable seems more hindrance than help — until he wanders straight into the heart of the matter.
The urgency ramps up as one missing woman becomes two, the second barely a ghost passing through. Suspects multiply, but only at the bitter end does Leith discover who is the coldest girl of all.
Of Related Interest
Last of the Independents
Sam Wiebe
2015 Kobo Emerging Writer’s — Winner, Fiction
2015 Arthur Ellis Award — Nominated, Best First Novel
2012 Unhanged Arthur Award — Winner, Best Unpublished First Crime Novel
What do a necrophile, a missing boy, and an unsavoury P.I. have in common? Private detective Michael Drayton is about to find out.…
Twenty-nine-year-old Michael Drayton runs a private investigation agency in Vancouver that specializes in missing persons — only, as Mike has discovered, some missing people stay with you. Still haunted by the unsolved disappearance of a young girl, Mike is hired to find the vanished son of a local junk merchant. However, he quickly discovers that the case has been damaged by a crooked private eye and dismissed by a disinterested justice system. Worse, the only viable lead involves a drug-addicted car thief with gang connections.
As the stakes rise, Mike attempts to balance his search for the junk merchant’s son with a more profitable case involving a necrophile and a funeral home, while simultaneously struggling to keep a disreputable psychic from bilking the mother of a missing girl.
The Whisper of Legends
Barbara Fradkin
An empty canoe washes up on the shore of the Nahanni River — has the river claimed four more lives?
When his teenage daughter goes missing on a summer wilderness canoe trip to the Nahanni River, Inspector Michael Green is forced into unfamiliar territory. Unable to mobilize the local RCMP, he enlists the help of his long-time friend, Staff Sergeant Brian Sullivan, to accompany him to the Northwest Territories to look for themselves.
Green is terrified. The park has 30,000
square kilometres of wilderness and 600 grizzlies. Even worse, Green soon discovers his daughter lied to him. The trip was organized not by a reputable tour company but by her new boyfriend, Scott, a graduate geology student. When clues about Scott’s past begin to drift in, Green, Sullivan, and two guides head into the wilderness. After the body of one of the group turns up at the bottom of a cliff, they begin to realize just what is at stake.
Cold Mourning
Brenda Chapman
Nominated for the 2015 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel
When murder stalks a family over Christmas, Kala Stonechild trusts her intuition to get results.
It’s a week before Christmas when wealthy businessman Tom Underwood disappears into thin air — with more than enough people wanting him dead.
New police recruit Kala Stonechild, who has left her northern Ontario detachment to join a specialized Ottawa crime unit, is tasked with returning Underwood home in time for the holidays. Stonechild, who is from a First Nations reserve, is a lone wolf who is used to surviving on her wits. Her new boss, Detective Jacques Rouleau, has his hands full controlling her, his team, and an investigation that keeps threatening to go off track.
Undertow Page 33