Cold Girl

by R. M. Greenaway

  “What did she say, exactly, as she left?”

  “Not much. ‘Back in a while.’ That’s about it.”

  “She was upset?”

  “Not upset. Fed up.”

  “With who, or what?”

  “Like I said, the music wasn’t coming together. They’re upbeat tunes. You can’t force upbeat, can you?” It was a black, rhetorical question. He said, “Stella said there wasn’t much point sticking around, so she and Chad left. Lenny crawled out of his room, grabbed a sandwich, went off with Tex to Prince George. That was my idea. I wanted him out of there. Last thing I needed was a sullen teenager hanging around.”

  This part Leith didn’t know so well, but he’d seen in the statements taken by Spacey, drafted up for review, that Tex was Lenny’s buddy who’d picked up Lenny and taken him off to Prince George for the day. So far neither boy had been reached, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. He also knew that both Lenny and Tex were homeschoolers, so they chose their own reading assignments and wrote their own schedules, which also made them harder to pin down. “What time was it they took off?”

  “About half an hour after Kiera left, I guess.”

  “What does Tex drive?”

  “Old Toyota station wagon. Silver.”

  Leith asked why the boys were going to Prince George.

  “There’s stuff to do in George. Tex has family down there. His dad’s there, has a big place, so they go there whenever they can.”

  Leith told him to carry on, and Frank was slumped again, eyes closed to help track his memories. “I had a bite to eat then called Parker in to see if we could salvage anything from what we had so far. Parker had a listen and said pretty flat-out, no, we couldn’t fix this. It was garbage.”

  “Parker?” Leith said, taken aback. “Who’s that?”

  “Techie, works at the college, does our post-op mix for us.”

  Leith got the gist. He asked for Parker’s full name and address, but all Frank had was a cell number, which he read out from his phone. Leith wrote it down and asked for a timeline for Parker’s attendance. Frank looked at his phone again and said he’d called Parker at 12:50, and the guy had come by within about fifteen or twenty minutes.

  Leith said, “So Parker comes over, listens to your recording. Now what?”

  “Like I told Constable Spacey, Kiera texted me. ‘Screw you. Get yourself another lead.’ Didn’t take it too seriously. She was just sulking. I texted back, asked her what that was all about. No answer.”

  “Right,” Leith said. “I’ve seen the texts. You didn’t press her for more. Why? Weren’t you worried?”

  “I was wondering where the hell she was off to, but I wasn’t going to play any head games. I figured she’d be back eventually, and we’d kiss and make up like always.”

  “Were you surprised when her truck was found up on the Matax?”

  “Totally. I guess she was going to see Rob. She wouldn’t be hiking the Matax, not at this time of year. Not dressed like she was. Unless she went home and changed. Which she might have, for all I know, because she was gone quite a while before she texted, and she couldn’t have texted from up on the mountain. No signal.”

  Leith said, “She hadn’t mentioned visiting Rob before she left?”

  “No, never, and I have no idea why she’d want to see him.”

  “How do she and Rob generally get along? Are they close?”

  Frank shrugged, cracking his knuckles. “They get along okay, as much as Rob gets along with anyone. Don’t have much in common, except me. I’ve got no clue why she’d all of a sudden go up to see him. Maybe she had something to tell him that she couldn’t tell me. I just can’t say. I asked Rob. He says she didn’t call, didn’t talk to him beforehand, and she never showed up there. I think she’s only been to the cut block once, me just showing her the operation last summer. You can ask Rob yourself, but he’ll say the same thing. He hasn’t got a clue.”

  Along with the knuckle cracking, there was a vicious undertone to his words that Leith made mental note of. It made him wonder, was there something between the lines he should be reading? He now went about angering Frank by backtracking for further detail, such as what was served for lunch, food and beverage, stuff that could be pertinent only in the grim event of an actual autopsy. Frank didn’t know what Kiera had or hadn’t eaten or drunk. Leith next asked about the pot smell. “Who’s the smoker in the house?”

  “None of us smoke.”

  “I’m not talking cigarettes.”

  Frank crossed his arms, an irritated man, paddling his feet on the floorboards.

  Leith said, “C’mon, Frank. I’m getting stoned just sitting here.”

  Frank sighed. “We all smoke. Everybody in the world smokes a bit of herb.”

  Except me, Leith thought. He wondered about the drugs, their source, whether they figured into the abduction at all, but it was a diversion he didn’t want to take quite yet. Except for one more question, relevant to nothing but his own concern for the welfare of a young person. “Does that include Lenny?”

  “Definitely not Lenny,” Frank said. “I won’t let him touch the stuff.”

  He said it adamantly, and Leith believed him and was slightly cheered. “Glad to hear it. So Kiera’s texted you. Go on from there.”

  “Parker left. I think I just worked on a song till Rob got home, saying he’d found her truck up at the Matax trailhead. Then I got scared.”

  At this point Giroux said she could smell coffee. Would it be okay if she helped herself to a cup? Frank nodded at her, and she rose and went to the kitchen, just visible from the living room through an opening in the wall, and banged around in the cupboards. “Carry on,” she said. “I can hear you from here.”

  Leith asked Frank to describe what Kiera was wearing when she left. Frank described distressed jeans, grey T-shirt, the heavy shapeless cardigan that looked straight off a homeless man’s back but was actually a pricey piece of steampunk she’d bought in Vancouver. And the boots to match, the army-of-the-future look. If she had a coat, she’d left it in her truck.

  There was no coat in the truck, Leith knew, so it was probably still on her back. What about her hair, he asked. Did Frank remember how was it done up that day?

  Frank shrugged. “She usually ties it back, for practice. Keeps it out of her face.”

  Giroux was back with a coffee mug between her palms. Leith said, “Photos. Were any taken on Saturday? Of Kiera, I’m interested in mostly.”

  Frank checked his phone and found one shot he’d chanced to take during the rehearsal. Leith had a look, and from what he could see Kiera’s hair was in a ponytail and clipped to one side with a barrette. The colour of the hair clip was indiscernible, and he suspected that no amount of pixel-tweaking would tell them if it matched the metallic blue clip found on the mountain. Still, it was something.

  He asked if he could skim through the shots, and Frank didn’t care, so he did, flicked through a few weeks’ worth and found typical pictures that young people take of each other and themselves, mostly out of focus and chaotic. A talented photographer Frank was not. It did tell him that however gloomy they’d been on the day of Kiera’s disappearance, they’d been happy enough in the days before. Of course the metadata would tell him a lot more, but he couldn’t get the metadata without a warrant, and he wasn’t even close to that yet.

  He asked if he could keep the phone for a day or two, upload that photo of Kiera? Frank looked at him aghast. “No way. I can email anything you want, but no way you’re taking my phone.”

  “Cool,” Leith said — not the word he had in mind. He handed over his business card. “Send me that shot, but soon as possible. Okay?”

  “Sure, I can do it now,” Frank said, and he sat there tapping at his phone, transferring the shot to Leith’s email address off the business card.

  Leith said
, “Once you heard from Rob of the Isuzu at the Matax, then what happened?”

  “I picked up Chad, and we dressed up warm and got flashlights and went up to have a look. Got there about eight thirty. Pitch black already. Her truck’s cold as ice. Doors were unlocked. She’s careful about stuff like that, locking her car. There was no notes, no keys, no handbag. Saw a bunch of footprints in the snow going down the slope toward the trail. There’s that little dip there before it climbs. So that’s where we went.”

  “Did you touch anything in the truck?”

  “No.”

  “See her coat there?”

  “No. Wasn’t looking for her coat.”

  “In the snow, how many sets of prints?”

  Frank rubbed his face. He’d said it before and didn’t want to say it again. “It was too messed up. Tracks overlaid and snowed upon. Then where the trail started there was lots of tree cover, so not enough snow on the ground to leave tracks. Farther in where the snow got thick again, we didn’t see any tracks, and we were looking for ’em hard. We walked around the woods yelling her name. Then went back to town and called you guys. Talked to Constable Spacey there. No search team till morning, she says. Couldn’t believe my ears. Still can’t.” He gave Leith a nasty stare, his eyes raw and sore. “So we gathered friends and family, many as we could, nearly a dozen, went back up and did it ourselves.”

  He was wilting again. He directed his next words toward the window. “I should be out there now, fuck me, looking for her.”

  “I think the Search and Rescue guys have it covered.”

  “Then I might as well get back to the block, help Rob get the trees in. The guy wants to shoot me. This is the last thing he needs right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Wood,” Frank said, dully. “Gotta get in as much wood as we can before spring melt.”

  Leith asked if he could take a look around, see the studio where they rehearsed, and whether Frank would be okay with a complete forensic search of the house and property, say this afternoon?

  Frank didn’t seem to care. “I can show you the studio now.”

  Down a hallway toward the end of the house, Leith and Giroux followed him into a large room, lofty, tidy, and professionally set up as a recording studio. Leith looked at the mixing boards, the drum kit, keyboards, and computers, what were probably acoustic-boarded walls, pricy-looking speakers and microphones, the heavy coils of cable, and a stack of black cases for taking the show on the road. He said, “How much does something like this cost?”

  Frank crossed his arms and pulled a face. “A lot.”

  A more definitive answer would be nice, but Leith left it for now.

  As they left the studio and headed for the front door, he said, “One more thing, Frank. Where’s Lenny? We tried the numbers you gave us. The first one’s not in service, and the others don’t seem to lead anywhere either.”

  A complicated new emotion flashed in Frank’s eyes, a visible ramping up of confusion and grief. Frank Law knew nothing of his brother’s whereabouts, and Lenny too, it seemed, was gone without a trace.

  * * *

  As Dion had it written down, Leonard Law was the younger brother of the missing girl’s boyfriend, which was a bit of a mind-bender, but not his problem. The great thing about being a nobody is the assignments are simple, the answers black and white, and nothing much matters anyway. You’re given a destination and a set of questions to be answered, you scribble it down, go back and type it up, then drink coffee till the next simple task. Perfect.

  There was a more immediate problem, though, in that he was lost in a strange town, the smallest town he’d ever worked within, population below a thousand, a number he’d had to double-check. He turned the tourist map of the Hazeltons upside down, finding it lined up better with where he had situated his cruiser on the shoulder of the highway. The car was GPS-equipped, but either the thing couldn’t pinpoint the address or he’d punched it in wrong. The five-minute drive had taken him half an hour, so far, and counting.

  His eyes found the road on paper, a little dead-end spur way over there on the other side of town, on the road to Old Hazelton. He pulled out a pen and circled it, then clamped the map under the sun visor and turned again onto the empty highway that shone like dull steel in the morning light, and after a few more wrong turns found himself on the right track. And there at last was the road itself, unpaved, and according to the number on the mailbox that was the house in question, a little pink bungalow under a white cap of snow. Dion peered through the windshield and saw on the front lawn a gathering of small lumpy people, four of them standing all in a row, dead still, wrapped and bound in heavy cloth. Leaving the car and taking a closer look, he found them to be skinny shrubs, covered in burlap and tied with twine.

  He climbed the three steps and knocked on the door. A woman, small and bottom-heavy, opened the door. Behind her a tall, lean figure stood, dark and mysterious and still, like a continuation of the shrubs in the yard.

  Dion presented his ID and asked the woman if she was Clara Law.

  “Yes, I’m Clara Law,” she said. “This is my husband, Roland. How can we help you?”

  “Constable Dion, RCMP,” he said. “I’m looking for your son, Leonard Law.”

  “Leonard?” Her eyes pierced him, puzzled. “Leonard Law?”

  He brought out his notebook and studied what he’d written down. He looked at the brass numbers hammered to the siding, and down again at the small woman. “You have a son named Leonard, ma’am?”

  “Yes, I have a son named Leonard,” she said. “But he’s not here, for heaven’s sake. Why would he be? Why are you asking?”

  “Leonard was at a house party that’s under investigation. We haven’t been able to contact him.”

  “Why didn’t you phone and ask, save yourself a trip?”

  “I think there were several calls placed, with no answer.”

  “They might have called, Clara,” the big man behind the short woman said.

  She looked around at her husband. She glared at Dion and said, “You’re letting the cold in. Please come inside so I can shut the door.”

  The interior was too warm. He removed his police cap and scraped his boots clean on the welcome mat. He followed the couple along a plastic runner to the opening into the living room. The room was darkened by fuzzy-looking wallpaper and heavy curtains. Clara Law told him to remove his footwear and sit, gesturing at an armchair. He chose to keep his boots on and stand on plastic.

  The place smelled sour. A huge grandfather clock ticked in a corner. Roland Law stationed himself behind the sofa his wife sat on, and the two of them watched Dion standing on plastic at the threshold of their living room. He said, “When’s the last time either of you saw or spoke to Leonard?”

  Roland Law startled him with a voice like a foghorn. “We haven’t seen Leonard for months. Haven’t seen any of the boys for nigh on twenty years.”

  Leonard Law, Dion had thought, was only seventeen. He began to ask for clarification, but Clara Law interrupted with, “Sweet Jesus, Rolly, let me do the talking.”

  “No,” Roland said, a huge finger in the air. “Wait. I did see him. In the gazebo. Looked out the kitchen window and seen him just starin’ out at me, then he just up and disappeared.”

  Clara smiled at Dion, whose attention was divided between her and her husband, now mostly on the husband. She said, “We haven’t seen the boys in probably a year and a half, and through no fault of ours, either, because let me tell you —”

  “My birthday,” Roland boomed, patting at his chest, his thighs, looking for something lost. “And where is it?” he said, still patting. “I’m looking for the damn thing, Clara, to show the man.”

  “Dresser,” Clara said. “Top drawer with your vests.”

  Roland stepped out, and Clara said, “All our boys moved out of home at sixteen.
Except Robert. He moved out when he was just fourteen and went to live in those welfare rooms near the highway where the Indians live, where frankly I wouldn’t let a dog live. He stayed there probably getting buggered by Mr. Heston who he worked for who runs the machine shop who got arrested for peedeefeelya. When Robert got big enough, he came over with a hunting rifle and threatened Rolly and took over Rolly’s logging outfit, and far as I know bought some land over near the reservation and built a house. Which doesn’t belong to Robert, of course. It belongs to the Royal Bank and always will. He was always very independent, very moody. The schools hereabouts are godless mills of crime and corruption, so we home-schooled all three. But Robert, who was born in a hospital, came into the world with a violent streak you couldn’t whip out of him and a tongue you couldn’t clean with soap or Tabasco, and when he turned his back on Jesus and family I banished him from my heart and changed the locks on the door. Frank was different, born by a Christian midwife. A good boy. My favourite. The prettiest baby, and smart as a whip. No Tabasco, no spanking, a listener, an angel spreading light into the world. Very talented, very musical, always with a guitar in his hand. He left the day he turned sixteen, and I cried for days. It’s Robert lured him away with alcohol and prostitutes. And then Lenny, my youngest. Lenny is slow in many ways, and such an ugly duckling. Not handsome like Frank. But he did write some nice poems. He wanted to leave with Frank, but I hung on for dear life, went to the government, and the government made him stay. The day he turned sixteen there was nothing I could do to save him, and Frank came by in his pickup and without a word took my youngest from salvation to Hell, and now they are all lost to me. All of them, stolen by sin, and not a word on Christmas or birthdays, and I can tell you that come Easter Roland and I will be kneeling here alone.”

  Dion didn’t doubt it. Something moved in the shadows, and he saw that Roland had stolen back into the room with an object in hand, a pipe, its bone-white bowl carved into a human head. The man held out the pipe to Dion like a gift. Dion looked at the pipe but didn’t take it.