“Definitely have to keep our eyes on him,” Bosko agreed, walking in front, talking over his shoulder. “Watch your step, Dave. It’s pretty slick here.”
Slick for a city slicker, Leith thought, and for a brief moment he enjoyed an image of the big man in front of him losing traction and doing the famous midair northern reel.
Ha, he thought, and his foot went out from under him.
Three
The Three Bears
COMING BACK FROM THE LITTLE pink house of Clara and Roland Law, Dion crossed paths with Constable Jayne Spacey. She was just heading out to grab a bite, she told him, and invited him along. Of all the people he’d met here in the Hazeltons, Spacey was the friendliest. She would catch his eye, as she did now, and smile, and for the moment he would feel okay. He climbed into the passenger seat of her cruiser and snapped on his seat belt. “Thanks.”
“Not a lot of choices here, you may have discovered,” she said. “But I’m going to take you somewhere really classy.” She drove hardly a minute down the highway, passing the Catalina — the food was way too greasy for a girl watching her figure — and stopped at the IGA supermarket. “They actually have some pretty good deli here,” she said as they left the truck. “And a place to sit down. And music.”
Inside they bought sandwiches and took a table. Spacey asked him about himself, a question he always dreaded but had planned for. He’d been with the RCMP for a year and half, he would tell people in casual conversation, not the ten years he’d actually served. That way he could avoid the crash altogether. Then he’d bulk out his early years of adulthood with vague odd jobs that nobody would care to pursue.
He gave Spacey the spiel now, and then went on in the brisk and cheerful way he’d been perfecting lately in the privacy of his own room. “Got posted in Smithers last October, and it’s great,” he said. “Nice place, nice people. Love it here.”
Spacey sized him up for a moment and said, “You’re what, twenty-six, twenty-seven? Kind of late start with the Mounties, isn’t it? But that’s cool. I joined right out of high school. Never done anything else.”
He was twenty-nine but didn’t say so. He told her it was beautiful here in the north. Strange words for the setting, a brightly lit supermarket deli with Muzak playing and shoppers pushing their carts past. But it was something he’d heard said a lot, how beautiful the north was, and a part of him meant it. Sometimes he found himself staring at the land in disbelief, and maybe it was just that, this wraparound beauty that made him — and by association his problems — small, insignificant, nothing at all. Spacey put down her fork and said, “Bullshit it’s beautiful. It’s a pit. It’s part of the circuit. It’s penance. I can’t wait to get out of here.”
She told him of her big family back in Canmore, Alberta, and her husband Shane, or ex, to be precise, a cheating creep she was happily divorcing. “He’s still crazy about me, but too bad, schmuck. You’re history.”
“No second chance?”
She laughed and shrugged. “I gave him a second chance, but he’s not getting a third. And this time he really blew it, ’cause it was Megan he fooled around with. My best friend. Or was. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine screwing around with your best friend’s husband? I mean, how can you live with yourself?”
Her words were serious but her expression was careless, and Dion wasn’t sure she wasn’t making it all up. He said, “Shane’s an idiot.”
She nodded. “As most men are. Are you an idiot, Constable Dion? Don’t answer that, it’s a trick question. And how’s your love life? Got a sweetheart somewhere?”
The woman who came to his mind’s eye wasn’t Penny, but Kate Ballantyne, whom he had broken off with after the crash. She still wrote to him sometimes, but he didn’t have the nerve to read those letters. And of course the longer he waited, the harder it was to approach them, so they remained in a box on the shelf, three so far. Meanwhile there was the relationship with Penny McKenzie from the post office, which he saw as nothing but a long date going stale. He summed up with, “No, not really.”
“Tell me another lie,” Spacey said. She reached out to touch a crumb off the side of his mouth, and now they were sitting knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye. She said, “Hey, you’re not religious, are you? Or a teetotaller?”
Neither religion nor drink had any power over him. He shook his head no to both questions, and Spacey was delighted. “Perfect, ’cause I’m going to take you out tonight, show you the town. Game?”
He hesitated a moment and said, “If I’m caught drinking and driving, it’ll be the end of my great career.”
“’Course not. I’m driving, and you’re sitting back and watching the scenery. Later, if we get along okay, we’ll park the car and take a cab out to the Black Bear for a beer. The Black Bear’s out on the Kispiox River. It’s where all the big-game hunters hang out. Heli-ski base and all that.”
“Sounds good.”
“Fucking fantastic.” She wiggled her upper body in a victory dance. She stopped abruptly, bit into her sandwich, and chewed a moment, watching him. “You’re part native, aren’t you?”
“Native? Me? No.”
She chewed a moment longer and then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Give me your phone.”
Wondering what didn’t matter, he handed over his personal cellphone, a fold-up Motorola. Spacey entered her number into its databanks, aimed it at herself, snapped a picture, and gave it back. She told him to call her about 8:00 p.m., and they’d arrange to meet. She checked her watch and said, “Oh my god, we better get back. I forgot to tell you, Constable Leith slipped on ice and banged up his hand, so he needs a scribe. Which is why I’m making myself scarce. But you don’t have my kind of leverage around here, so you’d better run along.”
She dropped him off back at the little detachment, and her cruiser scudded away. Dion climbed the steps and went inside. The reception area was noisy with young people, slouched, standing, talking, drinking pop. Passing through to the main office, he was flagged by one of the local uniforms and directed to go see Sergeant Giroux.
Giroux’s office was a small room, ten by ten at best, mostly taken up by an L-shaped desk and filing cabinets. She was at her desk, and in a chair across from her sat the terse blond detective from Prince Rupert named Leith, the one who had called Dion a lab rat. Leith was slumped, jacket and tie removed, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, his right hand swathed in tensor bandages. Both officers fell silent and looked at Dion where he had stopped in the doorway. Giroux remained seated and said, “Looks like you and me need to have a talk about lunch breaks and punctuality. How’s your handwriting? And your stamina?”
Neither were great, but he didn’t say so, and as directed followed Constable Leith down the hall to the first of two small interview rooms. There were no windows here, no sharp objects, ropes, or combustibles in sight. Just a desk and some chairs and a lot of stern posters on the walls. Leith took a chair, slapped down his notebook, and studied what was written there. “We’ll start with Chad Oman,” he said at last.
Since the crash, words had become Dion’s greatest enemy. Sometimes they came together easily, but often he needed some catch-up time. Already Leith was looking at him, losing patience, spelling it out more clearly. “Chad Oman, our witness. If you’d get him, please?”
Dion went to the reception area and called out the name, and a bulky native kid stepped out from the gathering of youths. Oman followed him to the interview room and sat across from Leith in practiced fashion, like he’d been interrogated before and knew the drill. Leith asked Dion if he had a tape recorder. Dion didn’t have one of the newer digital devices, which he found hard to figure out, but had an old-fashioned mini-cassette type with simpler controls.
“Good,” Leith said. “Take care of it.”
Dion checked that the blank tape was rewound to the beginning, thinking about the North Vancouver detachment, its
many interview rooms hardwired for audio-visual, and adjacent monitoring rooms, and usually extra staff to man the controls. Smithers’ one-room set-up was far simpler but modern enough. New Hazelton was a shocker, barely an empty closet, no Mirropane, no camera. He started the recorder and set it down, angled toward the witness, got pen and paper ready, and jotted down the preliminaries.
Leith told Oman that the conversation was being recorded, and for the benefit of the record gave time, date, place, and name of witness.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Oman said. “Whatchoo do to your hand there, bud?”
“My feet went south,” Leith said. “On ice.”
“Hooya, that’s a bitch,” Oman said gravely.
Leith grimaced. “I’ll get you out of here soon as possible. Just a few questions. Let’s start with Kiera Rilkoff and Frank Law. When and how’d you get to know them?”
“Knew Frank since grade eight,” Oman said. “We were always into the music, eh. Him on guitar, and me, I liked hitting things, so I got to be the drummer. We wrote some wicked tunes that looking back now, man they were bad, evil crap. But we got us a bit of a following. We were called Frankly Insane then. Stella came in with her fiddle, and then Kiera one day got up and took the mic from Frank, and we found out she could sing not so bad. And she’s got the looks too. I mean, talent is one thing, but ballsiness is everything else. She made it a show. That day at the school dance she opened her mouth and yodelled out ‘Soulful Shade of Blue,’ we knew we were magic. We changed the name to Fling, her call, and everything was great. And last summer it got even better when we got talent-spotted. For real, man. That lady talked to us after that fundraiser gig at the rec centre and told us what we already knew, that we’re really good, and we oughta get serious, market ourselves and whatnot.”
“Ms. Blackwood, is it?” Leith said.
“Mercy Blackwood. She’s huge. She launched Joe Forte and the Six-Packs. You know them, right?”
“Oh yeah,” Leith said. He didn’t really, but they sounded like a flash in the pan. “Whatever happened to them?”
“Forte got killed in a freak boating accident.”
Now Leith recalled the story. Forte wasn’t a flash in the pan. He was up-and-coming, but he’d died young. He said, “That was a long time ago. So she’s been in the business a while. She’s living here now?”
Oman nodded sympathetically. “I know, you’re thinking what’s a person like that doing in a place like this, right? She come up here to look after old Mrs. Trish Baldwin last year, who’s her relative or something, who’s gone now. Mercy says she’ll probably move on soon as the old house sells, but in the meantime she’s helping us out in a big way. Got us a bunch of sound equipment, made up our website, put our name out there. So, yeah, all of a sudden we’re not just high school rockers; now we got a future. Which is kind of funny.” His smile faded, and he finished on a quieter note. “So that’s about it. It’s so unreal, I can’t stop cryin’. I forget she’s missing, and every time I remember I just start cryin’ all over again.”
There were no tears in his eyes, but Dion got the gist, and Leith seemed to as well. “What’s kind of funny?” he asked.
“Nothing. What d’you think happened to her?”
“We’re working hard to find her,” Leith said. “What’s kind of funny?”
“Nothing, hey. I’m just so freaked out here, just can’t think straight.”
Oman was a fast talker, and Dion flexed his wrist. He wondered how many interviews he’d be on today. How long before his scribbles turned to garbage? Just get the key points, he told himself. Oman was describing for Leith the Saturday when Kiera walked out of rehearsal without explanation, and Dion’s key points fractured into point form, then finally random hieroglyphics. It didn’t matter, though, because the tape was getting it all down. Notes were just for backup and quick reference, memoranda for the continuation reports that he would be typing later. He rubbed his temple and flipped a page.
Oman talked about the new demo they were working on after the big disappointment in December when that Vancouver record label backed out of a deal. “Mercy says don’t worry about it, just carry on, write some new material, work harder, which is what we’re doing now, working on the new, improved demo that’s going to make us a big name.”
“And how’s that going?”
Oman shrugged, which said it all.
Leith said, “I was in the sound studio at Frank’s house. It’s an impressive setup. You’re saying Blackwood funded all that?”
“I’m not sure how that’s all worked out. They have a contract, I think. Frank could tell you. Are we done soon, because I want to go home and shoot my brains out.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a feeling Kiera’s not coming back, which means so much for making it big, which is super depressing, if you have to know.”
Leith told him gravely not to go shooting his brains out. He asked for more details, specifically if Oman recalled anything Kiera had eaten or drank or smoked, and what she was wearing as she left, and how her hair was done up, and her mood at the time. Oman didn’t know if Kiera drank any beer or smoked any dope. He didn’t recall what she was wearing, in particular. Jeans and a baggy sweater, probably, and those battered Blundstones of hers. He didn’t recall her leaving with her coat on. She left alone. He agreed that Frank was in a bad mood, but not angry or anything. They were all glum. Soon after Kiera left, Oman left with Stella, and later that night Frank buzzed in a big panic, and Oman had put on his winter gear and gone up the mountain with him to look for Kiera. They hadn’t found her, and that was that.
The interview wound down and Dion was breathing hard, as if he’d just jogged up a steep hill. The witness was having a few last words with Leith and seeing himself out. Dion reviewed his notes and felt the familiar sliding chill of defeat. The witness was gone, and Leith was by the door, studying him. “There a problem?”
“Couldn’t keep up so well at the end there,” Dion told him.
“It’s just for reference,” Leith said irritably, coming around, taking his seat, prepping for the next interview. “You got it recorded, right?”
Dion rewound the recorder to check with a brief playback. Nothing issued forth but a faint hiss. His pulse went into overdrive. He must have pressed play but not record. He looked at Leith and saw the kind of restrained anger that was worse than a blowup. Leith took Dion’s notebook, looked it over, and tossed it back at him. “I’ll dictate what I recall of the conversation. You write.”
They spent half an hour getting down what had been said, and Dion discovered that Leith had an excellent memory. When it was done, his nerves were still jangling, but the stifling fear had lifted. He said, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“Not a big deal,” Leith said curtly. “Just be happy it wasn’t our prime suspect.”
Dion nodded, and Leith devoted himself to his file documents.
“He was lying, there. I think,” Dion said.
Leith stared up from his papers. “What?”
The stare was direct and unsettling, and whatever lightbulb had been burning in Dion’s brain blew a fuse and went black. He said, “It just seemed … no, probably not. I thought … but … sorry.”
The detective’s unfriendly blue eyes stayed on him. “Thought but what?”
“Nothing. Sorry.”
“You just said you think he’s lying. Lying about what? What makes you say that?”
Dion was starting to sweat. He searched his mind for something, anything, but all he found was more dead air. He said, “Actually I forget.”
“You forget what?”
They were staring at each other now, the inevitable answer to the question lying heavy and silent between them.
With a slap on the tabletop, Leith said, “Just get Stella Marshall in here, please.”
Stel
la was a tall, solidly built woman in her early twenties with white-blond hair. Her eyes were pale and bulgy. Her pink skin was blotched, and a fine white down picked out by the fluorescent lights ran down her cheeks like vague sideburns. She spoke much slower than the drummer, to Dion’s relief, glancing his way from time to time as if to be sure his pen was keeping up. Sometimes she smiled at him. “I’ve known Frank forever,” she told Leith. “I joined his band in grade ten. I played bass guitar then, but I’ve gravitated toward fiddle, and I think that worked better in the long run. It branded us country and western, but that’s okay. We’re very popular around here. Produced our own CD. Didn’t exactly go viral, but we get some good paying gigs. And as you’ve heard by now, we’ve hit the big time with Mercy Blackwood coming along to back us. She’s got connections. She’s going to put us out there. Have you heard us play?” she asked Dion.
Leith brought her attention back his way, saying, “Let’s go over Saturday again. Give me a play-by-play of what happened that day, start to finish.”
Her narrative paralleled that of Chad Oman. Kiera had left rehearsal prematurely. She was in a bad mood, but her nastiness didn’t seem directed at anybody in particular. She hadn’t eaten anything or drunk any beer or smoked any pot. She might have been wearing a coat when she left, but Stella couldn’t be sure. Her hair was definitely tied back, and maybe pinned back too, on one side. Stella and Chad had left soon after lunch because there was no point hanging around. Frank had called her later that night, about eight, asking if she’d seen Kiera, and saying something about the Rodeo up on the Bell 3. Stella had taken part in the search deep into the night.
She tilted her head, and her long blond bangs swung. “They’re saying it’s the Pickup Killer. But I don’t believe it. Way up there, in the middle of nowhere? Do you want to hear my theory?”
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