Then he remembers the cell phone notification. He pulls the phone from his pocket and sees a text message. It's from Bryce Tobin's assistant/friend, Russ. Nate reads the message and his eyes widen:
“Grady told me what he told you,” the message reads. “I think we should talk”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Outside the Sobeys supermarket, Nate waits in his car for a woman who walks quickly, keeping her head down. He finds her attractive, but he admonishes himself for believing so, still unable to think much about the pleasures of the opposite sex even years after Eve's death.
The woman gets into his car, plops a small stack of papers she's been carrying onto the center armrest. “Here,” she says, a small amount of disdain in her tone. “I got what you asked for.”
“Lena,” Nate says, “I can't thank you enough for this.”
“You're right about that. I must be crazy for helping you.”
“We've always had a good relationship.”
Lena's worked as an administrative assistant in a few different RCMP detachments going back to Nate's early days with the Force.
“Anyway,” she says. “That's the list of trailers.” She points to an itemized list of serial numbers belonging to trailers reported stolen across the province. She marks one in particular with yellow highlighter, the one Nate's interested in. Nate looks at the sheets.
“Roger Dolomski,” he says, reading the name identified as the trailer's owner who'd taken the time to register the serial number. “Lives in Rimbey.”
“Yes,” Lena says. “Please don't share this with anybody.”
“I wouldn't do that.”
“I think you know the kind of trouble I could find myself in.”
“I know, Lena, trust me. I'm not telling anyone. But, this does help me with my investigation.”
“I don't know how, but I hope you find that girl,” Lena says.
“I will. Thank you.”
Lena gets out and walks back towards the grocery store.
Rimbey is about a forty minute drive north of Rocky Mountain House. Nate finds it just as depressing as every other backwater village dotting the foothills. A town full of out of work roughnecks, broke-ass senior citizens, and acreage owners getting paid to host natural gas wells on what used to be prime farm land. Nate pops a Cream and takes it down with a swallow of Tim Hortons coffee before getting out of his car parked at the end of Roger Dolomski's driveway. Dolomski owns a bungalow at the end of a roughly paved road closed in by fir trees. He emerges from his house, white-haired, in his 60s but still in pretty good shape from years spent in the military. He shakes Nate's hand as Nate spies the trailer in question perched beneath a raised deck, covered in a blue tarp. Nate points at it.
“That's her over there, I take it.”
Roger humors him when Nate asks to look at it, and check under the tarp. It's clean as a whistle.
“That's it,” Roger says. “Damned thing brought me a lot of trouble.”
“So I hear. Appreciate you meeting me to talk about it.”
“And you're a private investigator, right?”
“Yes,” Nate says.
“And you're looking into this?”
“I'm just following up. Checking on what the police did.” Nate hopes that answer will suffice. He's reluctant to let Dolomski know his theory that there might be a connection between the stolen trailer and the girls' case. He's reluctant to let anyone know, really, as he wonders even to himself if it's possible that this time his cop instincts have led him far astray.
“Like a civilian watchdog type of thing?” Roger says.
That works, Nate thinks. “Sort of,” he says, “yeah.”
“Okay,” Roger says, seeming to accept that, “the police did send someone out here. A younger guy. He came out, took a couple of photos. Wasn't a lot more to it. I was surprised.”
“Surprised?”
“Yes. I thought they'd bring some Forensics people out, have a look around the property. But, they never did any of that.”
Nate had a bit of a chuckle to himself. The public always believes the police have greater Forensic capabilities than is the reality. Shows like CSI and the various Law and Order spinoffs are no help in this regard.
“What did the officer say to you,” Nate asks. “Do you remember?”
“I was frustrated with the guy, I don't mind saying. He told me there wasn't much they could do. I gave him the serial number, told him I'd registered it. He seemed kind of positive that I had done that, but I feel like this guy, this young guy, he didn't seem to care. Just another call, you know?”
“I understand.”
“I feel like they'd have found the thing a lot sooner if they'd taken my complaint seriously. I gave him pictures of the tracks and all of that.”
“Tracks?”
“Didn't I tell you when we spoke on the phone? Thought I did. Anyway, yes, when they came and took my trailer they left a hell of a mess down here.” Roger motions towards the edge of his property and walks down with Nate in tow. He stops at a large gouge in the dirt where a piece of his lawn used to be. “Can't really see it now,” he says, “but there was a fairly distinct set of tire tracks here. Rain's been at it a lot since then, but at the time, I took some pretty good hi-res photos of the tracks. But that young guy, he didn't seem to care about them at all.”
“Did the officer take any photos of the tracks himself?”
“No,” Roger says, “none. Now, it was raining pretty hard the day he came out here, but still.”
“What did he say about it then?”
“Nothing,” says Roger, “told me to leave the serial number with him, he'd enter it into their database and see what came up, and that he wasn't making any promises. I'm surprised they found the damned thing at all, quite frankly.”
Nate's mind spins. This is the nothing turning into something right in front of me. “Would you be able to email me the pictures you took of the impressions?” Nate asks him.
“Definitely,” Roger says, “I'll do that right away when I get into the house. Did you want to come in?”
“Actually, I should get going,” Nate says, “but this was a big help, Mr. Dolomski. And like I say, if you could email me those photos, that'd be great.”
“No problem. And you'd mentioned before you were wondering about the name of the officer, right? The one who came out here?”
“Right. Do you have that handy?”
Roger opens the screen on his phone. “Just a second. Ah, yes, there it is. Constable Irwin. Frederick Irwin.”
Nate jots the name in his notebook. “Got it. Thank you.”
Sitting in one of his familiar spots, again in the parking lot of the Tim Hortons on the east end of Rocky, Nate waits for Constable Irwin to show up after reaching out to him. Then he sees the young officer pull around in a marked RCMP pickup. So much for being discrete. The officer spins and pulls in so their two driver's side windows align. Constable Irwin leans his elbow out and looks down on Nate through dark sunglasses. With his pale, flawless skin and wispy blond buzz cut, the kid looks barely 23.
“Sorry,” Nate says, “I didn't realize when I'd called you were still on duty.”
“I get off in 20 minutes,” Irwin says. “What's this about anyway?”
“You were the investigating officer on that stolen trailer a while back. Stolen from a property in Rimbey, if you remember.”
It takes Irwin a second, then a flash of recognition lights his face. “Right, yeah, older guy. I remember it. You a friend of his or something?”
“I'm a P.I., actually.”
Irwin scrunches his face, like Nate just told him he's a leper, or a mall security guard. Nate recalls that us vs. them cop mentality, he used to have it too.
“What do you want to know?”
“I guess Roger Dolomski, that's the owner of the trailer, the guy in Rimbey, he was a bit disappointed more wasn't done to find his trailer right away.”
Irwin grins in condescending fashion. “Ye
ah, they're always like that, these property owners. Expect us to drop everything over a stolen trailer.”
“He says he had pictures of tire tracks on his property and that you weren't all that interested in them.”
“Yeah, he showed me. There was nothing expressly linking those to the trailer being removed from his property. For all I know those tracks could've been left by someone else at some other time. Might've even been his. Not that it matters.”
“I'm just letting you know he was disappointed is all.”
“People always are,” Irwin says. “Look it's a three hundred dollar trailer. I'm not calling out a Forensics van and having members crawl all over the guy's property looking for clues and all that other stuff. We're loaded with case files as it is. I reported it, put the serial number in the system. Lo and behold it pings back, we got the trailer back to him. Far as I'm concerned we did what we could do.”
Before Nate could even think of a reply, Irwin put the police pickup in drive. “Anyway, that's it when it comes to that file. You can tell the guy he's welcome to lodge a complaint if he feels we mishandled it or whatever. For now though, I've gotta get going.”
“No problem.”
Youthful arrogance. Distraction. The constant busy-ness. Wearing the uniform, and everything seeming so important all the time. In that moment watching the young officer drive off, Nate missed it.
Armed with the emailed photos Roger Dolomski sent to his phone, Nate arrives at Caldwell's Tire Shop in the Rocky Mountain House Industrial Park. He meets and shakes hands with Brian Caldwell behind the front counter. When Nate shows him the photos on his phone, Brian takes the phone, pulls the glasses he'd had resting on the top of his head down over his eyes for closer inspection. He nods slowly, knowingly. He jabs a greasy index finger at Nate's phone screen.
“There's two brands of tire that could be,” Brian says.
“Would you mind writing them down for me?”
Brian obliges and scrawls the brands on Nate's notepad.
“What about type of vehicle?”
Brian chuckles. “A little above my pay-grade, boss.”
“Even just a guess would help.”
Brian studies the pictures again. The man had an air about him that he'd been around cars and trucks since probably the first time he could walk. Nate trusts his opinion.
“Definitely a pickup,” Brian says. “Definitely. Would correspond with the kind of tires I'm talking about too.” He squints, scrolls the phone screen up and down taking in the images in detail. “I might be climbing out on a limb here,” he says, “but that's a long bed.”
“A long bed?”
“Yep, an eight-footer I'd say. And she's a two-door. More than that and she'd likely have a set of dual-ies on the back, but this is just two tires at the rear. You see? And she's a small cab. Older model truck, I'd say. Two door, eight foot bed. Don't see them making those anymore.”
“Any idea on the model?”
“Couldn't tell ya. Most likely domestic. Ford maybe? Chev? It's possible it could be a Dodge. But it's a domestic most likely what you're looking at.”
“Thank you.”
“Does that help you?” Brian asks.
“It does.”
“What's this for anyway? Trying to find who left those tracks, I guess.”
“Just a bit of a research project, I suppose you could call it.”
“Well, good luck to ya.”
Driving away from the Industrial Park, Nate receives a call from Russ Camuner. He can hear the man breathing heavily on the other end.
“Russ,” Nate says, “I was just about to call you. Listen, I was hoping we could get together tonight, and-”
“I was only callin' to tell you, I can't meet.”
“What? Russ, I promise-”
“I can't do it, alright?”
Nate senses real fear in the man's voice. Before he can say another word, Russ hangs up on him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Determined to find out where this Lorna woman got Roger Dolomski's trailer, Nate sits outside the building supply store once again in Shaughnessy, south of Calgary. A four hour drive south of Rocky Mountain House. When he'd left the Red Line Motel around noon to make the drive, he'd noticed the RCMP had removed much of the yellow tape, and Bug's unit had been boarded up. Of course, no one was telling him anything to do with that investigation, and Tammy wasn't sharing information about it either.
Nate sits in his car with the radio on faintly, as he watches a couple of employees exit the store from far across the parking lot. Got to be a shift change, he thinks. He's confident he's far enough away, he'll be able to spot this Lorna woman come out without being seen himself. He knows if anyone at the store sees him they'll call the police for sure.
Then his phone bursts to life, the immediacy of the ringtone startles him. Caller ID shows it's Sam Gray.
“This is Striker.”
“What in the hell do you think you're doing?” He'd never heard Gray this pissed off.
“Beg your pardon?”
“Misuse of police resources, Striker. How dare you interfere in official police business.”
Official police business, who talks like this?
“Gray, I don't know what you're talking about, but I think you'd best calm down.” Nate keeps his eyes focused on the front of the building supply store while he listens to Gray fume through his phone speaker.
“Don't tell me to calm down. You're taking sensitive information out of our office and putting employees here in compromising positions. I'm calling to tell you you're done with that.”
Jesus, did Lena spill the beans? Why would she?
“Gray, I don't know-”
“Don't Gray me, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Going to Lena for those trailer serial numbers, then you go out and stir up this trailer owner in Rimbey, and I have to hear about it from some junior constable this morning, how you were questioning him over his handling of the file. Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Hold on-”
“No, you hold on. You're a P.I., alright? Maybe try remembering that when you go around trying to poke around in actual police work.”
“Now you're just being an asshole. I'm allowed to ask questions.”
“We found Carly Lewis and we found Zoe Myles, and we know Grady Barnes killed them, and when we find Raina Smith we'll get him for that too. And I know you were talking to him, Striker. We know all about it. You've got no right, speaking to him. Never mind the fact the man's a known liar. So whatever he told you is bogus.”
Gray stops long enough to breathe heavily a little more. Nate never takes his eyes off the store across the lot.
“You about done?” Nate says.
“What the hell Grady say to you anyway?”
“Hey, it's none of my business, right?”
“Don't get smart,” Gray says. “You just watch yourself.”
“What? Are you making a threat? That could be perceived as a threat, in case you weren't aware.”
“I don't care how you perceive it,” Gray says, “just stay the hell out of our investigation. You got that?”
“Gray, can I-”
“I said, you got it?”
Nate shakes his head and sighs. “Yeah, Gray, I got it.”
“Good.”
The phone clicks dead.
Nate tries to suppress his adrenaline as he watches a woman emerge from the store wearing the customary red uniform. That's Lorna. Shit. Alright, let's do this.
He starts up his Taurus and waits for her to drive away in her pickup. It dawns on him in that moment she's driving a truck, but it's a late model Nissan with a 5 foot bed. He can't tell the tire type from about a football field's distance, but he's pretty certain that truck isn't the one he's looking for. Still, he needs to ask Lorna how she came into possession of the trailer. That is, if she'll talk to him. But he has to try.
She drives the truck out of the lot and onto the Metis Trail headed s
outh towards the Trans-Canada Highway. Nate reverts back to the training he'd received as a cop on how to surveil a suspect without being spotted. He keeps well behind Lorna, enough so the average civilian with little to worry about would ever suspect someone was following them.
Lorna drives for a half hour on the main highway. They're well out of Calgary city limits and approaching the Brown Bear First Nation. Lorna takes the exit towards a community called Franklin which is on the reserve. Franklin is actually the reserve's main hub. As soon as he drives into the place he sees the tell tale sign he's on The Rez. Nothing is paved. There's a lot of neglect. Derelict buildings. Rusted out cars. Unkempt yards. Broken windows. Missing doors. A lot of curious faces staring back at him.
He watches Lorna's truck pass over a blind crest. He waits before going up the rise himself, and as he does he sees her drive down a dirt road about two hundred yards before parking on an incline in a driveway next to a large gray house built into the side of a hill. Nate pulls off to the side of the dirt road and watches Lorna move from the truck to the house. Once she disappears inside, he pulls up closer to the house and puts his car in park fifty yards away from her driveway along the side of the road. A group of young kids, all indigenous, stare at him while he sits. They approach his car, not shy about their curiosity. He sees them coming and would rather not talk to them. He notes the other two pickup trucks in Lorna's yard are also more recent models, with longer four door cabs and beds shorter than eight feet.
It's possible Brian, the tire shop guy, is wrong about the source of those tracks, Nate thinks. But, he doubts it.
The kids surround Nate's Ford Taurus and put their hands up to their eyes and press against the windows on all sides, gawking in at him, making goofy faces.
Nate rolls his window down, and the kids on the other side of the car come around with the rest. A group of about eight kids stands next to Nate's car. Nate shakes his head as this makes it impossible for him to do his work undetected.
“What are you guys doing?” Nate says. If I appease them and talk to them for a few minutes maybe they'll get bored and leave me alone.
“Yer stupid,” says one of the kids. They're all boys except for one. Nate figures they're all right around nine or ten years old.
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