Cold Girl

by R. M. Greenaway

  “Sure,” Leith said.

  “I think she had engine trouble, and she was walking down the road, and maybe decided to cut through the woods to avoid the switchbacks, and fell and twisted her ankle or something. She’s probably alive, just can’t move. She’s very outdoorsy and savvy about survival. But I imagine your SAR guys have checked the area far and wide with a helicopter and dogs and the works, right?”

  Leith said yes, they had, and Stella said in that case she didn’t have a clue. She said that she was glad she’d kept the day job, and now she was done too and was allowed to leave, wishing Dion a good afternoon and ignoring Leith.

  A man named Parker Chu came next. Chinese-Canadian, thin and unsmiling, a self-admitted nerd. Parker told Leith he wasn’t friends with Frank or the others, that it was just a job for him doing their sound work. He was employed at the community college some days, teaching computer, but it wasn’t great pay. He was planning to move to Alberta soon as he could pin down a better job.

  The band paid him by the hour, he said, though the hours were running thin. He recounted how Frank had called him up Saturday just before one, and he’d gone right over, because work was work, and listened to the tracks, which weren’t tracks at all, but random noises. No, he exaggerated, he said, with a smile. But it was bad. He’d talked it over with Frank, trying to be diplomatic about it, and left within the hour.

  Yes, he recalled Frank’s phone pinging, and Frank sending a text moments later. Just one, two at most. He looked kind of peeved as he did it.

  Parker left, and before Dion could go out to fetch the next interviewee in line, one was brought to them by Sergeant Giroux. She darkened the doorway with a boy in his late teens at her side, tall and solidly built, his brows bunched into a thundercloud of anger.

  “Look who showed up,” she told Leith. “This is Leonard Law, better known as Lenny.”

  She left, and the seventeen-year-old took the interviewee’s seat. His brown hair was long at the front and short at the back. He wore skinny black jeans and a bulky black hoody covered in bold white graphics. The hoody looked new, to Dion, and expensive.

  “I just got back,” Lenny said, nearly spitting the words at Leith. “And Frank says Kiera’s missing and you guys are looking for me. You think I did something to her, is that it? ’Cause I didn’t do nothing, and I got an alibi to say so, and I want a lawyer, and I want it now.”

  Leith opened his mouth, but the boy wasn’t done. “I don’t have to say nothing till I got a lawyer. And I want a real one, not your Legal Aid joke-in-a-suit who can’t get your name right, let alone what you’re supposed to have done.”

  Leith said, “Sit down, Leonard — should I call you Leonard or Lenny?”

  “You can call me nothing, ’cause I got nothing to say. I get one phone call, right? I think your talking to me before I get my phone call is a breach of my rights, and none of this can be used against me in court, and you know what? This is all you’re getting from me from here on in.” He stood looking combative, mouth turned down and arms crossed tight.

  Leith said, “Take it easy. Would you sit down, please?”

  The kid uncrossed his arms and dropped hard into the chair.

  Leith said, “It’s just we’re talking to everyone who was at the house on Saturday. You’re not being charged with anything. You’re just a witness. Honest.”

  Lenny sat, thinking hard. Dion rotated his writing wrist. Leith continued to watch the boy, waiting through the silence as though he knew it wouldn’t last. He was right.

  “But I’m not a witness,” Lenny burst out. “You say she’s missing? I didn’t even know it. I was in Prince George. With Tex. I don’t even have a phone, ’cause Rob cut me off, so I was five hours away and didn’t even know you were looking for me.”

  “Yeah,” Leith said. “I know.”

  The colour was returning to Lenny’s face. He cleared his throat and said, “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” Leith said.

  “So what’s happened to Kiera?”

  “We don’t know what happened to Kiera,” Leith told him.

  Lenny sat for a moment, staring into nothing, then without warning his face crumpled and he was crying like a frightened child. Dion was glad, because his writing hand was sore as hell, and tears didn’t need transcribing.

  * * *

  Leith was fried. He shut down the interviews for a time out to talk to his colleagues. He sent Lenny Law on his way and met with Bosko and Giroux in Giroux’s office. The others sat, but he paced. He’d had enough of sitting for a while.

  “The kid was mighty defensive,” he said. “You told me he hasn’t been in trouble with the law before.”

  Giroux at her desk shook her head. “Hasn’t even lifted a candy bar. But it’s what he grew up in, eh? The three bears were estranged from their parents early on. If you met them you’d know why. So they moved into their big house in the woods and far as I know stay out of trouble. Rob was never caught committing a crime, but probably everyone he was close to as a youngster had done time. And as we know, Frank’s got that assault thing. So if Lenny’s edgy about the police, you can see where he gets it.”

  Leith described the boy’s crying jag, which was understandable, maybe, but didn’t quite jibe. “All these people, for some reason I’m having a hard time reading them. Why do I get the feeling they’re holding back?”

  Bosko asked, “What did Lenny have to say, once he pulled himself together?”

  “Nothing new. He was in his room all morning and left after Kiera was gone. He didn’t witness anything.”

  “Did he tell you about Prince George?”

  “Not really. Like his brothers said, he goes there a lot. Nothing strange there.”

  “Sure,” Bosko said. “Did he give any reason why, here in the communication age, nobody could reach him for two whole days?”

  “I did ask him about that. Lenny’s lost his cellphone rights. Tex doesn’t answer his dad’s home phone, as a rule, and it happens he wasn’t picking up his cell either because he was trying to avoid some girl, and he doesn’t have caller ID, so he wasn’t screening either.”

  “All of which you’re going to verify with Tex,” Bosko said, a question without a question mark attached.

  Leith hadn’t planned on verifying anything except the trip itself, but gave a nod. “Spacey’s tracking him down right now.”

  Bosko said to Giroux, “That reminds me, how are you doing for manpower? You have a village to run, and we’ve stolen your troops. Are you getting everything else covered, or should we call for more help?”

  “More help would be good,” Giroux said. “We’re down one rookie ’cause this ass slipped in the mud and broke his hand, so he needs a scribe.”

  Leith said, “Slipped on the ice and sprained my wrist.”

  “However you want to say it, we’re down one guy who’s taking notes for Dave here instead of out doing his own interviews, which is too bad, ’cause there are plenty of minor witnesses on my list that even he could handle.”

  “Dion?” Leith said with contempt. “I wouldn’t let that halfwit make coffee. What are they letting out of Regina these days? He can’t work a tape recorder. Scares the hell out of me that he’s in charge of a loaded gun.”

  Bosko lifted his brows. “What’s he done, exactly?”

  “It’s not so much what he’s done,” Leith said. “We all make mistakes. It’s what he is. He’s slow, and he’s absent. You haven’t noticed?”

  “I’ve noticed him,” Bosko said, not quite answering the question. “Do you feel you should write him up?”

  “No,” Leith said after a moment’s consideration. “Not at this point. But I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on him.”

  “And maybe have a talk,” Bosko suggested.

  A counsellor Leith was not. He grimaced and moved on. “First impr
essions on everyone I’ve talked to so far. Frank Law’s still my first choice, but he’s got at least one good alibi, Chad Oman. I don’t think Oman’s lying to cover him. Stella Marshall I’m not so sure about. Parker Chu is solid. I’m more interested in Rob Law right now. Think of it, he’s up at his worksite, not far from Kiera’s truck. He couldn’t have gone down to meet her without being seeing by his crew, and nobody saw him leave, but he was there after everyone left. Maybe he met her then, down at the Matax, or she’d made her way up to the site, waited till everyone left before going in to see him.”

  Giroux and Bosko looked doubtful, and Leith knew why. A logging road in mid-February was no place to hang about for hours, even in the shelter of a vehicle. He sighed, checked the memo that had been handed to him in the hallway, and recalled he had one more interview to cover off. Not a band member or family, but Scott Rourke, a friend of the Law brothers who lived just up the road from the Laws, now waiting out in the reception area. Rourke was the last one to see Kiera alive, if he could be believed, but he’d already been cleared as a suspect, and so far Leith had seen no need to question him himself.

  The facts were simple enough: Rourke had been riding his dirt bike from his mobile home toward town when Kiera had passed him in her truck. The time, as far as he could narrow it down, was just before one in the afternoon. She hadn’t acknowledged him, probably hadn’t recognized him as she approached, just sped past. It was about all he could say then, but now apparently he had something to add, and this time he wanted to talk to the lead investigator.

  Rourke was a name Leith was all too familiar with from his many long days of weeding through the listings in his search for the Pickup Killer. This one he’d pulled and run through the system more than once because of its history, but nothing had panned out, and he’d moved on. He said to Giroux, “Our biker. We all know this turkey, but I haven’t talked to him in person yet. What can you tell me about him?”

  He saw a shadow cross her brow, and she made a noise, something between a spit and a hiss. “Where do I start?” she said.

  * * *

  Leith ushered Rourke into the interview room, gave Dion the name, and took his seat. Scott Rourke was an ugly sucker, face rippled by a nasty scar. He was somewhere in his late fifties, with yellow hair going silver. He wore skinny jeans, battered cowboy boots, a white muscle shirt, and a black leather vest with a large, grubby bird’s feather — illegal eagle, Leith suspected — laced to its lapel. First Nations people could possess feathers and whites couldn’t, and Rourke was white as white could be. He draped himself loosely over his chair, gnashing on a wad of chewing gum, stared across at Leith, and said, “Well, let’s get started.”

  Leith told Rourke to state his full name, age, and occupation.

  “What’s what I do for a living got to do with anything?” Rourke said.

  Dion the scribe wrote it down.

  Leith hardened his voice. “We won’t know until we know, will we?” He studied the scar bisecting the witness’s face, starting from the forehead, skirting the inside of the left eye, running down the left side of the nose, crossing the mouth, not quite centre, ending off to the right of the chin. Somebody had done a job on him, but a while ago. The scar looked old.

  “I’m self-employed is what I am.” Rourke’s brown arms were crossed, every tendon popped and delineated. “I fix things. Okay? Anything I can fit on my workbench, I fix. Small engines, clocks, microwave ovens, you name it. Well, okay, maybe not microwave ovens. Okay? But everything else under the sun, it’s broke, I fix.”

  “All right,” Leith said. “Self-employed fix-all. Was that so bad? See, I ask you questions, you give me answers, he writes them down, and we move on. That’s how it usually goes.”

  “Thank you for educating me on the fine art of interrogation. So move on.”

  “You said you have some information for me about Kiera Rilkoff. I’ve got your statement about seeing her drive past on Kispiox Road. What else d’you know, sir?”

  “It’s not so much what I know as what I want to know. Time is of the essence, right? The first forty-eight and all that. I don’t see a lot of action happening here, you all sitting around, questioning people like you’re writing some fucking book. What a waste of time. It’s not people that got her, it’s that bastard, and she could be still alive, and you people better get your ass in gear and start turning over rocks.”

  “What bastard got her?”

  “You know the bastard I’m talking about. Mr. Pickup, who strangles young girls and leaves them in shallow graves. He’s been having his sick kicks for two years now, and with all your equipment and your brains and manpower, you keep letting him get away, and now he’s got Kiera, thanks very much.”

  “Is that your information, Mr. Rourke? Are you done? ’Cause I have a few questions myself. You live about a stone’s throw from the Law brothers, is that right?”

  “If you call kilometre and a half a stone’s throw.”

  “You’re a close friend of Kiera Rilkoff?”

  “That’s why I’m here, you fucking genius!”

  “Keep your hair on,” Leith snapped. “This is a police station, not your local watering hole, get that straight. When did you last see her?”

  “You guys already asked me all that.”

  “I’m asking you again.”

  “Last night, then, to be exact. It was a hot day, blue sky, and her and Frank were standing in the river, okay? Down at the S-Bend, up to their navels and side by side. I was on the beach in a purple tux, reading them their vows from a podium made of Popsicle sticks. That’s the last time I saw her.”

  Dion the scribe was clearly not keeping up. Leith picked up the tape recorder, checked its little bars were hopping, and set it down again. He leaned toward his witness and said, quietly, “That’s fascinating, sir. But see, this fellow has to take down everything we say, and he thinks you’re giving him a load of writer’s cramp for nothing. And he doesn’t think it’s cute. And neither do I. So let’s stick to facts. Okay? Not dreams, not your artsy-fartsy sarcasm. Fact.”

  “I thought I’d share an interesting dream.”

  “I don’t want to hear your interesting dreams.”

  Rourke shrugged. “Who the fuck knows the last time I saw her, besides her driving past me on Saturday. On the street maybe, few weeks ago, stopped to chat, whatever. Or I was over there for dinner, or they dropped by. We just bump into each other all over the place, helter-skelter, willy-nilly.”

  Dion’s pen fell to the floor with a clatter. Leith waited till he was back in business and said, “Your relationship with Kiera. In your mind it’s a little more than just friends, isn’t it? You’ve got ideas about you and her. Fantasies.”

  Rourke straightened in indignation. “Fantasies? Me? I’m old enough to be her grandfather.”

  “Ever heard the term ‘dirty old man’?”

  “Ever heard the term libel action? Because, sir, I’m just itchin’ —”

  “All I asked you,” Leith pointed out, “is if you’ve ever heard the term. What were you doing Saturday?”

  “Nothing. I worked on my projects. Fixing things.”

  “Anybody with you?”

  “A friend.”

  “Name.”

  “Evangeline Doyle.”

  “Contact information?”

  “She lives with me, so get it from your file.”

  Leith gave Dion a nod to flag the name. “Anything else?”

  “When I heard about Kiera, I went up the mountain and searched it high and low, doing your guys’s job for you, which is just plain hair-brained, ’cause that mountain should have been turned inside out on that first night, not by a bunch of amateurs, but by a bunch of cops who could have maybe found a clue or two before it got destroyed, because guess what, there’s a murderer at large. But no, I guess you got your protocols to follow….”r />
  He had plenty more, and Leith argued with him for a while, but mostly he let the man rant. He didn’t like Rourke, a man with a bad criminal record, but for now all he had against him was his own, sorely biased contempt. He watched Rourke’s mobile and badly scarred face, the rolled-up sleeves, the scrappy hands, oil-blackened and rough, and the muscled arms flexing with every angry word. There was a rhythm to his words, a drumbeat that was saying more than it was saying. The missing girl wasn’t his only grievance, or the shortcomings of the police service. It was something bigger and meaner, and it was wounded, and just as Leith was getting a sense of what it might be, Rourke seemed to short out, tossed his hands one last time, and said he was bloody done here.

  Leith said, “Glad to hear it. Thank you, sir, for your time. And do yourself a favour, lose the feather. Next cop you meet might not be so nice.”

  “I got Mohawk in my blood.”

  “Good for you.”

  He watched Rourke leave and then smiled briefly at Dion, who was already clearing up to leave. “Got all that?”

  Leith wasn’t a great smiler, never had been, but he thought he’d give the rookie a chance. If he could make contact, find something of value, some tiny glimmer of intelligence, he could maybe start on the road to positive mentoring.

  In the next instant, he wished he hadn’t bothered, as Dion nearly stumbled in his haste to rise and said sharply, “No, I didn’t get all that.” He didn’t look well, his pale face flushed, his hair sweaty and spiked, dark rings under his flashing, angry eyes, and for the first time he had plenty to say. “Nobody could get all that. You let your witness off the leash, throw sticks and watch him run, just for the fun of it, and you expect me to get all that?” He removed a tatty duty notebook from his pocket and flipped it across the desk at Leith, who was still staring at him in dumb surprise. “Read it, if you want, circle all the mistakes, and send me to hell, if you want. Frankly, I don’t give a shit.”

  He strode out, leaving behind the little spiral notebook in its leather case.

  * * *