Cold Girl

by R. M. Greenaway

  “Hiking trail heading off the Bell 3,” the auxiliary told him. “Where Kiera’s truck was found.”

  “Bell 3 …”

  “The logging road.”

  Leith told the auxiliary to contact Giroux and let her know he was on his way. The auxiliary said, “I’ll try. Can’t guarantee a connection. The airwaves are thin up there.” She supplied him with a map, marking it with Xs, one for the Bell 3 turnoff and one for the Matax trailhead. Leith thanked her.

  “It’s going to be tedious,” he told Bosko as they headed back out to the truck. “You’d be better off checking into your room and kicking back. They’ve got us booked in at the Super 8 over there. I’ll just drop you off?”

  “I’ll tag along, if that’s okay.”

  They left the town lights behind, and Bosko got a tour of the Hazeltons as they passed through the settlements of Two Mile, Old Town, over a canyon into the heavily forested Kispiox area and beyond, where Leith was soon lost, in spite of map and GPS. With Bosko’s help he did manage to locate the Bell 3 signpost, the words nearly obliterated by driven snow, and took the turn, geared the truck down, and the high-suspension, fat-tired V8 police truck began to climb the snowy road beaten flat by previous tires. The incline steepened steadily and the road narrowed until even Bosko sat mute as the headlights lit the banks falling steeply away inches from his right shoulder.

  The second X on the map wasn’t far in theory, a mere 9.7 kilometres of straights and switchbacks, but it was a crawl to get there, and nearly an hour passed before a pylon glowed in the headlights. A moment later a row of vehicles came gleaming into view, a couple of police SUVs and a black four-door sedan that didn’t look fit for the terrain. Leith pulled in behind the sedan and stepped out onto the road, wincing. Crystals fell light but fast, tiny daggers lashing his face. Upslope and deep in the woods a hard light pierced the darkness, a signal to follow.

  “Not a good place to break down,” Bosko remarked. He stood now at the nose of the truck, taking in the scene. Leith shone his flashlight toward the man and saw how out of place he looked in urban overcoat, collars turned up, glasses flecked with snow and his short hair flipping about, but no fear on his solid, pale face. Bosko checked his cellphone for signal and confirmed what Leith already knew. “Not a single bar.”

  The pylons pointed the way to a parking area for trail users, ribboned off with crime-scene tape, the ground here churned by tires, but no vehicles occupying its space. Leith swung his light about low and caught another line of pylons, and these led him up on a short trek into the woods. Here as everywhere the forest floor was disturbed by foot traffic in every direction, silent evidence of the searchers who would have been and gone, criss-crossing the wilderness, calling out Kiera’s name and blasting whistles.

  He and Bosko reached a clearing, a kind of muster zone, and arrived at the lights and action they had seen from afar. Officers were spread out in the trees, marked distantly by the bobbing of their flashlights. The muster zone was lit by heavy-duty portables on stands, and under their raking glare stood a roundish bundle named Renee Giroux.

  “My big-city detective at last,” she called out as the men arrived before her. She stared past Leith at Bosko. “And you are?”

  Leith made introductions, and the little First Nations CO forgave Bosko for being a stranger enough to shake his hand. “I was just leaving,” she said. “Good thing you got up here to see what we’re dealing with. But this,” she said, and scanned about the site, which was a confusion of crime scene tape strung between bushes, “is going nowhere fast.” She pointed to where several officers were concentrated, performing a finer grid search. “Possible burial site there, snow heaped about, but no body. Her friends and family from here to kingdom come were up yesterday and spent the night looking for her. Natural enough, but what a disaster. SAR made a couple passes overhead, and they’re on the ground now, team of eight, doing the crags and crevasses. Reason I’m up here is Dash drove in from Terrace about half past four and yanked his handler into the bushes, where we got us a game-changer.” She pointed to where two constables were searching the forest floor. “Found it over at that marker. Which is, what, a hundred feet from her car. So all of a sudden it’s looking not like a girl lost in a woods but a girl taken by persons unknown.”

  Leith told Bosko that Dash was a tracker dog from Terrace and that actually it was probably the dog’s handler who drove, and asked Giroux what exactly the game-changer was.

  “A cellphone,” she said. “Looks new, and I’d be stunned if it wasn’t Kiera’s. Haven’t looked at it yet, was waiting for Big City to show up and do things proper.”

  Big City was her nickname for Leith. She grinned fleetingly, not pleasantly, and looked around and again pointed. “Dash said there’s nothing of interest beyond that point, so that leaves us with two scenarios. A) She lost or discarded her phone, then got a ride with someone we don’t know and is some place we don’t know, safe and sound but phoneless and for some reason unwilling or unable to get in touch. B) She was abducted and lost her phone in the struggle.”

  She paused, and Leith knew she would be thinking of the faint but frightening possibility that the Pickup Killer had moved in. Here, to her zone of responsibility. Bosko said, “We didn’t see her vehicle on the parking flat. It’s been towed down, has it?”

  Giroux nodded. “Fairchild’s call, not mine.”

  Leith told Bosko that Corporal Fairchild was head of the Terrace Ident section. He was on scene now, overseeing the search.

  Giroux said, “Duncan’s sent their big rig and came and got it. Had my doubts, but got lots of pictures before it was touched, inside and out, and figured we’d be better off giving it the once-over in the garage.”

  Bosko scratched his ear as if he had his doubts and looked at Leith. Leith nodded shortly at him. “Life in the outback, sir. They use Duncan’s Auto Repair around here for tows.”

  “Anyway,” Giroux said, “Fairchild wants us to get that phone down to a signal and see if there’s any messages. Where’s my exhibit man?” She turned and bellowed at her crew, “I’m taking the phone and going down. Spacey, shoot it over.”

  A figure approached from the shadows, and the exhibit man, it turned out, was Jayne Spacey, a regular constable Leith had once worked alongside. Spacey, in heavy fur-lined parka, pulled off a mitt and handed an exhibit baggie to Giroux. She noticed Leith and smiled a crooked hello at him, which impacted him now as it did every time they met, taking his breath away. That was young Jayne Spacey, her face asymmetric like she’d suffered a stroke, but all the more beautiful for it.

  Before he could fumble out a greeting, she turned to go, saying something about another missing person she had to go search for and rescue.

  Leith called after her, “What?”

  She walked backward a step or two, grinning. “Just kidding. Our temp, Constable Dion, from Smithers. Went off into the woods and didn’t come back. Kinda cute but not too bright.” She laughed, faced around, and trudged away into the dark.

  He watched her go. He heard a murmuring of voices from the possible burial area and looked sidelong to see Corporal Fairchild beckoning him. He left Giroux and Bosko talking and joined the man and a small crew of Giroux’s constables, who stood by a square of land about ten by ten, marked into a search grid with pegs and string.

  Fairchild was near retirement, shorter than average, with a heavy grey moustache and gloomy eyes. He looked at Leith and said, “We got glitter, Dave.”

  Which to anyone else might sound silly, but filled Leith with dismay. “Damn,” he said. “What colour?”

  “Take a look.” Fairchild pointed with his penlight beam, and Leith crouched and aimed his own penlight at the same clumps of snow within the grid. He angled his beam this way and that until the light bounced back at him in a pink flash.

  It was the holdback info, the quirk, the fact that traces of body glitte
r had been found on two of the Pickup Killer’s victims. Lab work had tracked it down to the same brand in both cases, and even to the chain store that sold it, if not the store itself. The store was found in just about every mall in the province.

  He stood, swearing. Fairchild said, “Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Lotta girls wear it these days. And pink’s a popular colour. Could be from lip gloss, or they put it in their hair, on their fingernails. They even glue it all over clothes. We’ll scoop what we can, send it in, see if it’s Hello Kitty.”

  Even if it matched the brand, Leith realized, it wouldn’t be definitive proof. Up here shoppers didn’t have a huge choice in anything when it came to the more esoteric products. If you were after body glitter, as he knew from those earlier investigations, Hello Kitty was pretty well what you were stuck with. Fairchild was right; maybe it meant nothing. But it sure didn’t make him happy, those tiny sparkles of pink in the snow.

  * * *

  Dion was in trouble. He’d lost track and was wandering in circles, every step a struggle in the deepening snow. She had sent him this way, but how far was he supposed to go, and how far had he gone? He ploughed along farther from the lights, farther off the trail and into darkness, until there was nothing but his flashlight beam for company, and the woods were dense, the sky blacker than he had imagined possible. He swore at his own feet that couldn’t seem to keep him upright, at the ear-popping elevation, the chill, the gloves he’d left behind. At himself for telling his CO back in Smithers that he was up for the challenge, and at the CO for believing him and sending him this far north. It had been a murderously long drive on slick roads, where logging trucks barrelled at him like monsters from the darkness, wood bits flying in their wake. He’d nearly lost his life on that road, lost traction twice, fishtailed once, then slowed to a crawl till his cruiser gathered a parade of headlights at its rear. But he’d finally arrived, two hours and fifteen minutes later, not the “one hour max” they’d told him.

  The town they’d sent him to was called New Hazelton, about a quarter the size of his Smithers posting. From the New Hazelton RCMP office — the smallest detachment he’d ever stepped foot into — he’d been sent still farther out, twenty kilometres of back roads and then up the scariest mountain he’d ever faced, and now here he was, swallowed in wilderness, searching for a famous person. Famous locally, at least, far as he knew.

  He skimmed his light through the trees. He reminded himself how grateful he was for this first real chance to prove himself. “This is fantastic,” he said aloud, and his voice came out thin and quaky in the heavy silence. His boots slithered again, this time almost taking him down. He steadied himself and swore again. His teeth started to chatter, and to stop the chattering, he gritted them, but the shivers only moved into his shoulders. The light beam he was scoping through the spaces between the trees flickered, came on again strong, then blinked madly. “No, don’t!” he shouted. He banged the torch on his thigh and thought about batteries. How could he forget such a fundamental as putting in fresh ones and packing spares? His heart began to thud.

  “No big deal,” he said and was reassured by his own adult voice, low and angry. “Walk back, follow your tracks.”

  He turned to head back to where he thought the distant main lights should be, thinking about wolves, and now his heart banged harder because he couldn’t see his own tracks in this dim, wavering light beam. He turned the thing off, in part to conserve what juice was left and in part to make him less of a sitting duck to the nocturnal eyes that watched from the wilderness on all sides. He’d heard the predatory noises, the secretive shifting, the low breathing, the salivating, the circling. The sounds came from here first, then there. He turned, turned again, looked back, looked sideways.

  Listening hard, he could now hear nothing but himself existing, the blood coursing through his system, the nylon of his jacket squealing with every shallow breath. Then something else, a distant crunch-crunch climbing toward him. Not a wolf, but maybe worse. He turned with measured speed and breathed out heavily as he saw that it was only her, the local constable, Jayne Spacey, who’d met him on the logging road some hours earlier and given him his instructions. She was following her light beam in his direction, calling out his name. He waved overhead. “Here.”

  The light landed on him. She crunch-crunched to a stop before him and cast her beam down so it bounced off the snow and lit her up like an actor before the stage lights, the angel saviour with one eyebrow tilted. She said, “What’re you doing standing in the dark? Been gone so long I thought you froze to death out here.”

  “My light’s dying,” he said.

  To prove it he raised the torch and clicked the button. Light flared like a small sun, catching her full in the face, making her squint. He shut if off again as fast as his cold fingers would let him, and Spacey said, “Well, lookit that, hey? It’s fixed itself.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  He tested the light on the snow, the trees, the sky, and she said, “So I guess we’re at a dead end, right?” She was nodding, agreeing with herself. “Yeah, we’re on that thing I like to call the unlikely perimeter.”

  “There’s tracks,” Dion said, something he’d almost forgotten. With the light strong now, he found his way back to his only discovery, the mysterious, fairly fresh footprints cutting through a small clearing in a strident way. Spacey leaned to see where they went and then waded through bracken and crouched to inspect the boot prints closer. She smiled back at him and said, “I was hoping they’re yours. That would be really funny. But they don’t match.”

  She made her way back, looking at him with new interest, maybe concern. She said, “But we’re just looking for small stuff, not tracks, remember? This area’s been swept. The tracks, they’re just SAR doing their rounds. You okay?”

  “Fine. I was just heading back.”

  She stood watching him, scanning for some kind of information he couldn’t supply. Her hood was fur-fringed, and the fur was lashing about, along with a stray lock of gold hair. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes gleaming as she maybe saw through him, saw that he wasn’t fine, that he was cold and confused, just a step away from petrified. “First days are always rough,” she said kindly. “But it’ll get better, promise.”

  The words stung, first days, but worse was the sympathy. He nodded and tried to sound grateful. “Good to know.”

  She laughed and reached out to knock him playfully on the shoulder, the punch slowed by too many layers of clothing. She said, “It’s getting onto eight thirty. Big meeting at the Catalina Cafe. Did you book accommodations yet? You’re just an hour away, Smithers, right? Most staff just day-trip it, but the boss says there’ll be no commuting on this one right now. Waste of time, she says. And makes no sense moneywise. She gets a deal at the Super 8, cheaper than manpower miles, even with the per diem. If you like, I’ll take you out later, show you the town, all two minutes’ worth of it. You won’t fall in love, but at least you’ll have a map in your mind.”

  He’d lost most of what she said, except the time. He angled his flashlight to see the hands of his wristwatch, and she was right, it was only half past eight, nowhere near midnight as he’d thought. “Meeting?” he said.

  “Basic briefing, not mandatory for you, but you’d better come along, familiarize yourself with our reign of terror called Renee Giroux. I have to tell you, she’s nothing like that nice white-haired NCO you got running the show at Smithers. He treating you right?”

  Spacey’s voice was young but husky, like she’d been a heavy smoker for years. Her speech patterns were snaky and hard to track, almost as bad as Penny McKenzie’s, but she seemed nice, and if he was lucky he’d be shadowing her for however long he was stuck here, three days, four, before they found the missing girl, the singer whose name he’d already forgotten. He almost forgot the name of his NCO too, but it came to him now, as they hiked downslope toward the portable lights. “
Willoughby, yeah,” he said. “He’s great.”

  Back in the brightly lit clearing, Spacey spoke with some members from the Terrace Ident section who stood by awaiting instructions. There was nothing left to do here tonight, Dion heard. They’d pack up and go, with a reduced crew to return in the morning light. Packing up everything but the crime-scene tape to mark the spot, the team carted out gear bags and went about powering down the lights. The generator grumbled to silence, and the last halogen faded to black. Flashlights came on, and all members prepared to leave the site, leaving only Dion kneeling in the snow, struggling with his designated task, packing a set of mattocks and spades into something like an oversized hockey bag. The task took him longer than it should, because his hands were numb, and the tools had to be laid just so or the zip wouldn’t close.

  Finally, he bullied the thing into shape and got it half-closed, then stood with it hoisted over his shoulder and gave the darkened scene a final scan, and it struck him with a wash of horror: they’d all leave, and she’d be left alone, if by some freak chance she remained trapped in some hidden nook or cranny. He imagined her reviving, crawling out into these terrifying woods, crying out, being met by silence.

  Strange how he’d seen her in person, just a few months ago, at the Smithers Fall Fair. He pictured her now, the pretty girl dancing about the stage, singing her heart out. Kiera, that was her name. As it turned out, it was Kiera who needed help, not the black-haired girl in the bleachers he’d fixed on so pointlessly. If he’d been looking at the stage, not the crowd, maybe he’d have seen something that would lead to some conclusion now that would save the day.

  He snorted at the idea and dug at the trampled snow with the heel of his boot, testing it for give. The ground below was hard as iron, so she couldn’t be buried deep anywhere hereabouts. And the mountainside had been combed by dozens of searchers, so she wasn’t buried shallow either. She’d been taken away then. He knew it. Maybe on foot, but likely in a vehicle. From what he knew, which wasn’t much, he believed she was dead.