All of it was true, and Dion felt his metabolism rising. “I’m not like this,” he told Leith, hating the sound of his own voice, shaky and maybe insane. “I’m good. I’m better than you and everyone else here put together. I put in years of blood, sweat, and tears, and I got places. Look at my service record, then you go ahead and put my failures on a chart, put ’em against my accomplishments, you’ll see what I am.” He poked himself violently on the chest. “I’m the best. I’m down right now, but I was getting up, not with your help or anybody else’s. If you couldn’t see that, you’re a worse fucking detective than I even thought.”
He stopped, half blind with indignation, and got his bearings. He saw the vague outline of the man he was shouting at, who looked pale and bruised. “Right,” Leith said. “I get it. You didn’t get coddled like you wanted. So what are you waiting for? There’s the door.”
“I’m going,” Dion said, and looked sideways at the open doorway. His eyes were clouded with inner heat, and the door seemed murky and distant, a challenge to reach.
A moment passed, and Leith said, “I may be a lousy detective, but even I can see you’re not. Or did I get that wrong too?”
The room came into focus, but it shimmered and glitched. Past Leith were maps on the walls, the window looking out on New Hazelton, the flowering cactus on the sill, the desk with its clutter. Dion felt the breath socked right out of him. He moved toward the door and stalled again. From the corner of his eye he saw Leith had turned to face the window and was looking out, and he was speaking now matter-of-factly. The words were strange and incongruous in the moment, halting Dion in his tracks. “As you’re in no big rush, I might have a job for you. Come here.”
Dion joined him at the window. He followed Leith’s gaze outside to the bleak scenery, the pelting rain.
“That trail you walked yesterday with Spacey,” Leith said. “She can’t time it now because she’s sick. You have to go as fast as you can and log it for time and distance. Pretend you’re a desperate man, not a moment to lose. Can you do that?”
“What?”
Leith laid out the details of the mission. “Sergeant Giroux says she’s got a pedometer that’ll do both measurements,” he finished. “So you’ll use that. Spacey’s got the path all flagged out in pink ribbons, so it’s just a matter of following ’em all the way to the Matax trailhead, making note of the time, and doing a fast return trip. Fast, but without breaking your neck. Ignore the blue and the green ribbons. They’re dead ends. Stick with the pink. Think you can manage that?”
“Of course I can manage that,” Dion said. “But why should I?”
“Because you couldn’t walk out that door,” Leith said, losing patience again. “Because you have something to prove, and here’s your chance. And believe me, it’s your very last.”
Dion burst into scornful laughter, because he wasn’t that much of a fool. “I get it. Give me the dirty job nobody else wants to do and dress it up like a big favour.”
“Is that a no?”
Dion snorted. He looked again at the rain, and his first instinct of point-blank refusal was already complicated by a stronger desire to take on the challenge. A minute dragged by, and he knew that point-blank refusals had to be made point blank, not sometime later. He sniffed, and tried to match Leith’s irritation with his own. “How much time did he have to get there and back?”
“Fifty-five minutes between loading slips. Anything else?”
There was something else, but it was touchy. “That thing you mentioned, is it easy to use?”
“Thing?” Leith said.
Dion narrowed his eyes at him. “For measuring distance.”
“Oh, the pedometer? Easy as a wristwatch. Hang on.”
Leith left the room and came back with the gadget. Dion paled as he took it, looking at its LCD display, numbers blinking at him as he thumbed one button then the other. He thought of his new Timex that beeped at him at odd moments throughout the day, and even with instructions he couldn’t figure out why, or how to mute it, or how to make it beep when he needed it to. This was a hurdle he didn’t need right now. But no sweat. He’d just go on the Internet when Leith wasn’t looking. There was a how-to page for everything these days. Except somebody would catch him googling it. Spacey would notice. She’d point it out for all the world to see, him googling how to use an idiot-proof pedometer.
He had no choice but to back out now, tell Leith he couldn’t do this run. His face burned, and the lump in his throat made it difficult to pull in air. Shallow breathing made his ribs ache and the room vibrate. He looked at Leith, and the face was a blur, starting to run, and still he couldn’t put the words together.
Leith took the pedometer from him and dragged over a couple of chairs. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
* * *
Dion had no running gear, so he wore his casual civvies, the hiker-like boots from Mark’s, his favourite black jeans, and on top the layers that somebody had suggested, tank, sweatshirt, patrol jacket, rain cape. He and Thackray drove up the mountain, that long, jouncing crawl with the heat blasting, to Rob Law’s cut block. They parked and in the shelter of the SUV went over the plan. Thackray would wait in the vehicle, ears on alert, and be ready to respond in case there were any problems. If he didn’t get any updates for fifteen minutes straight and couldn’t get through to Dion, he’d call in backup and hit the path himself to see what was amiss. Thackray pressed his bony hands into a prayer and told Dion to please, please report in diligently, because he really, really didn’t want to hit the path. Dion promised.
The crew was hard at work in the downpour, and Dion knew enough about the logging industry by now to understand that it was a seasonal scramble; they were racing against the spring melt, which would mire the north in mud, bringing operations to a standstill. He shouted a question at one of the workers, and the answer was shouted back at him that Rob was out at the mill dealing with some sort of tally dispute, and would be back within the hour.
Dion climbed to the raw land behind the Atco trailer and stood in his flapping cape at the mouth of the trail, by Spacey’s first ribbon, and set the pedometer as Leith had shown him. The forest ahead looked worse than yesterday. It hadn’t rained on him yesterday, and the sky hadn’t been smothered in blackish clouds that cast shades of nightfall over the land. Rain rattled on his cape and drizzled from the hood brim. He looked up at the sky and back some distance to the worksite, where it seemed half the crew stood watching him.
He pressed the start button and headed down the path at an easy stride, picked up speed only when out of sight of the spectators, and jogged along for some time, the cape catching on bushes. He stopped and struggled out of it and abandoned it by another of Spacey’s markers, and now he was cold but unencumbered. Icy water coursed down his face and neck and back and rode up his pant legs as he ran, chilling him to the bone, but the exercise pumped his blood and warmed him. He hadn’t moved, not really, since the crash. And this was no rehab treadmill but body in motion, complete with the hot rasp of his working lungs and the strain on his thighs.
He tired, recovered, and pressed on, faster, fast as he could push himself, straddling slippery logs, ducking under low branches, pounding through the mud puddles. He slowed when the path narrowed, and slowed further when it became treacherous, but mostly he jogged. He remembered in the nick of time to report in to Thackray, then ran downhill, slithered, righted himself. Splashed through another puddle, and now faced a long, steady slope of rocks, pathless but with pink ribbons marking the way across the scree, and up he went, soaked and grimed head to toe. At the top of the hill he looked down the valley, sweaty, sore, and breathless. Looking to his left, he could see off in the distance the three ribbons set in a triangle that he knew was the Matax trailhead. He clambered up through tall, dead grasses in time to hear, not ten metres beyond, the approaching roar of a truck and the drone of i
ts brakes as it passed on its way down the mountainside on the Bell 3 Road.
One final climb and he stood on the road, almost directly across from the trailhead, the world quiet now except for the pattering of the rain that was softening to snowfall. He stopped the timer and checked. Nineteen minutes. He noted time and distance, contacted Thackray, and started back.
For the return trip he needed no markers. He was limping and nearing the end of his reserves when the upper reaches of the logging site came in view, and he walked like a cripple the last few metres to find the total time of the two runs, not counting the five-minute rest, was forty-four minutes, which as he understood it left the killer eleven minutes to commit his crime.
He stood making final notes in the small yellow book that Leith had given him, specially designed for wet-weather writing, and when he looked up again he found the killer himself stood facing him, a mere seven or eight feet away. He and the killer sized each other up, himself cold and wet and dirty, Rob Law dry and secure in gumboots and olive-green rain gear, eyes glinting from the shadows of his hood. Law was white-faced, fierce, and silent, and with the blackness of the forest at his back he looked like a samurai about to hoist his sword and lop off the enemy’s head.
But Dion was armed and unworried. He squeegeed water off his face with a palm, and in the second it took to do it he’d lost his suspect. Law had turned and was walking back toward the worksite, not a word spoken. Dion called out, “Mr. Law? ’Scuse me. Could I borrow your office for a moment?”
But first he needed to let Thackray know. Down at the SUV, he fetched his gym bag and spoke to the constable, who sat reading a police manual in the warmth of its cab, studying for his next level exams, he’d said. Dion explained what the deal was, that he was going to change into dry things in the trailer, that Rob Law was there, to just keep an eye out. Ten minutes, max. Thackray wondered if it wouldn’t be prudent if they went to the trailer together, considering Law was a suspect. Dion said he didn’t think so, and Thackray went back to his reading.
The trailer inside was as dark as the outdoors, and not much warmer, but Law was working on getting the place running. A generator grumbled and then came a metallic whir, harsh light and dust-scented heat. “Place’ll be too hot in about three minutes here,” he said and went about making coffee in a slow, determined way, mixing sugar, no-name instant, and whitener in two mugs. Dion stripped off sweatshirt and tank and pulled on a clean, dry T-shirt. The jeans he would have to live in till he got back to his room, same with the wet boots. He bundled the soggy mess of used clothes into his bag and joined Law at the table, where a cup of coffee awaited him. As he took his chair, Law spoke so low it was hard to make out the words. “So, you have it all figured out?”
“I’m not the one who figures things out.”
“Well, the path. You got that part figured.”
Dion started to say he was just the runner, but found he couldn’t. He was far from powerless, and to say otherwise would be a lie. He gave a noncommittal nod instead. The coffee he’d just gulped was hot and sweet and awful. Across from him, Law was thinking grim thoughts, if anything could be read in the teaspoon he was absently bending out of shape between two thumbs. But wet feet turning to ice and the fact of Thackray waiting in the truck both spurred Dion to get going, and after another gulp of the awful coffee, he stood. “Thanks for the warm-up. I’ll be off now.”
Law nodded, not moving from his chair, still in his rain gear, and he looked like he might sit like this all night. Dion saw depression, and it worried him. He walked back to the table and asked, “Is there a problem, Mr. Law?”
Law’s throat worked. Eyes turned up, for a moment he looked younger than his years, almost juvenile. The moment passed, and he was himself again, a thirtysomething grown man, a mover of earth and trees without much of an education, now asking a strange question in a near snarl. “They still hang people?”
Dion was back in his chair, startled that anyone wouldn’t know the basics of law and order in this country. But he supposed that if a man doesn’t watch TV, doesn’t listen to the radio, is maybe just not interested in how the world operates, he might go on believing there are still gallows set up in the backrooms of every penitentiary. “No, of course not.”
Law pulled a cigarette from a box on the table then held out the open box. Dion, who hadn’t stuck a cigarette in his mouth since the crash, shook his head. “I never been to jail,” the killer said after lighting up, pulling in and streaming out the exhaust to one side, not to hit his guest in the face with it. “Scottie has, though, like I’m sure you know. Seven and a half years. Got off easy, considering what he did. Nearly killed the poor bastard. But it’s ’cause it was done in the heat of the moment, he says. Beats me. How can a man be excused because he was pissed off? Don’t understand the world. Never will.”
Dion nodded in sympathy.
Law returned the nod, but he wasn’t present, Dion could tell. He was elsewhere, talking, smoking, drinking coffee, all in a trance, going on in a low, fast mutter. “Jail just about killed him. He says it’s kind of a chemistry, that you either cope or you don’t, depends who you are. If you’re too soft, you’re better off dead. I’ll cope, I think. I’m tough. Yeah, I’ll cope.” His eyes had widened in a blind stare at the tabletop in front of him, the mangled spoon that lay there. He seemed to lurch at a new thought, and this time the fear was sharp enough that he visibly paled. “Or electrocute?”
He wasn’t being cute. Dion said, “There’s no capital punishment in Canada.”
Law watched him, registered the words, and that was about all. There were tears in his eyes, but they didn’t fall yet. He couldn’t seem to get the cigarette to his mouth now, and it smouldered between his fingers. Couldn’t get another word out either, though it seemed he was trying.
Dion had been in much the same shape earlier today, but his problems were nothing compared to this man’s right now. He said, “It’s okay. I’ll take you down in my vehicle. Gather what you need. I’ll wait right here.”
Law nodded. The tears were making creeks now, but he didn’t crumple, didn’t seem to even notice as he crushed out the cigarette and stood and looked around, wondering what he might need for the strangest trip of his life. Dion stood near the door and kept an eye on the patch of night sky through the window, but mostly he watched Rob Law, a man on a cliff right now, who might need catching.
Eleven
Confession
“HE WHAT?” LEITH SAID.
“Confessed,” Giroux said, again. “He killed Kiera Rilkoff.”
The mountainside run had produced a helluva lot more than time and mileage, then. It had produced a prisoner, and quite possibly the end of the tunnel. Leith took it all in, one part relieved and three parts doubtful. Constable Dion had brought the prisoner in and was now at his desk in muddy jeans, dirt smudged across his face, writing down in ballpoint the conversation he’d had with Rob Law as verbatim as he could get it while it was fresh in his memory. From where he stood in Giroux’s doorway, Leith could see the temp bent over his notebook, putting down the words so carefully he might have been tracing somebody else’s scrawl.
Bosko hadn’t left yet and was at Giroux’s desk, on the phone, speaking with Crown counsel by the sounds of it. Giroux was at her board, considering the map, the path, the time and distance, and the possibilities. Leith joined her at the board.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “If Rob’s not just making this up to save his brother’s neck, where’s the body? Without a body, I say he’s taking us for a ride. And what possible motive could he have for killing Kiera, hey?”
Leith thought about it, and when he answered it was more for Bosko’s ears, Bosko who would be leaving soon, who hadn’t once brought up the subject of Leith joining the bigger, smarter Serious Crimes Unit down in North Vancouver. “Taking us for a ride, for sure,” he said. “He hasn’t got the brains for this fancy
alibi nonsense, loading slips and deer trails and all that. I just don’t buy it. He’s lying to cover for Frank, which points to his confidence in Frank’s guilt, which is about the best thing we got from this whole damn exercise.”
Giroux didn’t argue. She stood deep in thought in front of her maps and charts. Bosko’s ears had missed Leith’s snappy logic altogether, and he was laughing about something with whoever he was on the phone with, a deep, comfortable laugh, a man who probably didn’t know the meaning of self-doubt.
Giroux, who had got the ball rolling on this path theory in the first place, now in her contrary way began to tear it down. “So he signs these loading slips,” she said, “Does a two-K run, kills his brother’s girlfriend, does another two-K run, and then signs another loading slip. Before we talk to him, let’s take another look at those papers, see what his signature tells us. A psychopath might be able to fake it, but that’s not him. He was in tears and very scared, from what Dion says.”
Leith wished he’d thought of it, checking the loading slips. Maybe that would have dazzled the man from the city. The only dazzling he’d done so far, he realized, was forcing John Potter into a premature death. He hauled the box out of the exhibit room and found the loading slips stored in a thick, grubby manila envelope. He pulled up a chair and emptied the flimsies out on Giroux’s desk. Those from the Saturday Kiera disappeared were already separated out, and he put on his reading glasses, put the slips side by side on the desk, and inspected Rob Law’s signatures, one against the other.
The writing he saw was sloping and immature, but practiced. It was just a signature that didn’t say much of Rob Law’s intellect, but it gave insight into his state of mind at the moment he put pen to paper. Leith knew from the records that Rob was a dropout, that writing wasn’t his thing. Or reading, or high-tech anything, or current events. How strange, in this day and age, to be so insulated, nose to the ground, machines and money, payables and receivables, while the world accelerates into a breakneck spin around you. He shook his head. “Looks identical to me.”
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