Giroux had done her own inexpert handwriting analysis, and agreed. “Right. He’s either very cunning or he never left the worksite. Probably the latter. He’s covering for Frank, and I’ll bet he knows what really happened on Saturday. You want me to sit in with you, or do it alone?”
“Alone,” Leith said. “This is going to be a piece of cake.”
* * *
Rob Law told all. He sat in his work clothes, smelling of diesel fumes and the cold outdoors, avoiding Leith’s eyes, not looking at him at all, and confessing to a variety of sins and crimes. “It’s been going on for years,” he said. “Me and Kiera. It just kind of happened. ’Course I felt bad. Every time it happened, I swore never again. But couldn’t stay away from her. Last week she says she’s going to tell Frank about it. I said no, we don’t have to tell Frank nothing. We have to end it and pretend like it never happened. She was okay with ending it but still had it stuck in her head that she was going to tell him. So our last meeting there, we had a fight about it, and I ended up rattling her, and she hit her head on a rock and she just kind of stopped talking.”
“How’d you arrange to meet?”
He shrugged. “We talked it over few days before. Time and place.”
“What time and place was it.”
To Leith’s surprise, Rob answered promptly. “Two thirty, Saturday.”
“Carry on, then.”
“I tried to bring her back, but she was dead. I hid her as best I could and ran back to the site before they figured out I was away. After work, when all the guys had gone home, I drove my truck down to the Matax. I scooped her up and drove up the old Bell 6 a few miles, into the woods, buried her deep. I can try to find the place, but won’t be easy. I was just in shock, eh. Doing things without much thinking. All I could think was I didn’t want Frank to find out about me and her. Or that I’d killed her.”
He bowed his head, about as genuinely miserable as a suspect could be. Leith said, “Took a shovel along, did you?”
The suspect nodded.
“Buried her and covered her back up?” Leith knew the ground was too hard to dig up — you’d break your shovel before you could make a dent — and already he was fixing a snare on the story, proving not that Rob was guilty, but that he wasn’t, and the only charge he’d be slapped with was one of aggravated obstruction.
Rob nodded again, and he spoke now with an effort, pushing the words out in a hoarse whisper as he stared at the table. He looked revolted, horrified, maybe awed by what he’d done. “Ground’s like iron. Can’t dig. Found a pile of deadfall. Rolled her in. Heaped snow over top.”
The snare had tripped, and all it had caught was what looked like genuine remorse. “Ah,” Leith said. “You’ll be able to find her for us, will you?”
Law nodded, wet-eyed. “Yeah, for sure.”
Was it true, then, all of it? Had the logger actually done the killing, as he said, hidden the body, and was now coming clean? Maybe so, and if so, then Leith needed to switch modes. He was no longer bent on debunking Law’s confession but hammering it into place, closing off any escape routes. “So tell me,” he said. “Why the urgent need to meet her on Saturday at two in the afternoon?”
Law had a good answer for that one too. “Her and Frank and the others were planning an out-of-town trip in a couple days, playing at a dance down in Burns Lake, then another in Vanderhoof. It was about my last chance to talk to her alone. Convince her not to tell Frank.”
“Vanderhoof is hardly the moon. They’d be back in a couple of days. Why not wait?”
“I couldn’t wait. She was going to tell him, who knows when.”
“Okay,” Leith said. “One more thing I need to tie off before we head up the mountain. Tell me about your relationship with Charlene West.”
There was a lengthy pause while the logger studied him. “Didn’t work out,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know. She got sick of me, or sick of this place, left a note and went back home. Why, did you talk to her?”
“We had a few words,” Leith said, loading more meaning into the statement than it deserved. In fact, it was Jayne Spacey who’d done some investigation a few days back, and with help from the Dease Lake RCMP had tracked down Charlene West’s cell number and given the girl a call to have a few words. And “few” was a stretch:
Q: Ms. West, you lived with Robert Law down here in Kispiox, and his brothers Frank and Lenny last year?
A: Little bit, yeah.
Q: Why’d you leave?
A: Had a fight.
Q: Do you know Kiera Rilkoff?
A: Sure.
Q: She’s missing; any idea what happened to her?
A: Nope.
And that was about it, according to Spacey’s transcription. But Rob didn’t know any of that, so Leith used it for what it was worth, giving the suspect the quiet, confident stare that said the gig’s up, buddy, I had a good long talk with your ex and she spilled the beans on your dirty little secrets.
But maybe Rob wasn’t reading the stare, gawping back at him with dull and distant wonder, and finally blurting out, “Yeah? So?”
Leith rose to his feet and led Rob out to the main room, where they pulled on coats, hats, and gloves. Then they joined the others in the rear parking lot and climbed into trucks, bound for a search that would maybe turn up the remains of the Rockabilly Princess at last.
* * *
They had spent many long hours on the mountainside, traipsing about in a land without landmarks, hunting for a burial spot on the heels of the self-confessed killer, but no body had been found. Rob Law seemed as distressed about his failure as anybody. Just couldn’t remember exactly which goddamn spur he had taken, he said.
He was back in his holding cell now, and Leith was at his own holding cell, Room 213 at the Super 8. Surprisingly, it was only seven o’ clock, the evening sky cloudless for a change, sharp and clear, each star a bright sparkle against the heaviest blue. He was helping himself to a mickey of Scotch to soothe his nerves, sitting on his bed, on the phone with his wife. He told her of the new schedule, not a happy one, and he swore too much in the telling, until she told him to stop, because she didn’t like that kind of language. Alison wasn’t a prude, just sensible, and she saw no point in saying the F-word with every out-breath like most cops and criminals were prone to. It jarred the ears.
“Anyway,” he told her, “he says he did it, and I think he did it, but he led us all over kingdom come and can’t find her now in all those woods. So we’re going to have to bus in a bunch of cadaver dogs from Rupert, George, Terrace, wherever we have kennels. So it’ll be another few days at least. If that doesn’t work, we’re going to excavate the cut block, top to bottom. Yup, pull it all up, inch by fucking inch. Sorry. Because maybe he’s just leading us on a wild goose chase miles uphill when really she’s right there under our feet. Imagine that. He’s got an eight-foot bucket at his disposal. Can you imagine the hole you can dig with that thing in about two minutes flat?”
“I can imagine,” Alison said from across the miles, that warm and familiar voice that he missed so much. Time and distance made all the wrangling seem ridiculous now. The arguments about how he shut her out, about how she needed to lay off when he was tired, about having a second child (she wanted one, he didn’t), about his opinions about certain of her family members, her opinions about certain of his, it all seemed trite now, and he only knew he loved her madly.
She let him ramble on a bit longer about the pursuit of a body and then interrupted, saying, “That’s enough. You’re really wound up, you know? You make my head spin. There is a world beyond crime, and you gotta get your mind off it. Go for a walk. Read a book. Listen to some music. Okay, hon? Then get some sleep.”
“Okay, hon,” he murmured. “Thinkin’ of you, babe.”
“Thinkin’ of you too,�
�� she said.
He signed off, feeling better, wandered with his plastic tumbler of Scotch to the window, and gasped. Above the black rip-line of the mountains, a light-show played out in undulating waves of green and pink. The phone at his hip buzzed urgently, and it was Renee Giroux in his ear now, saying, “Finally. I tried your work phone, and it went to voicemail. So I tried this number, and it went to voicemail too, so I had to assume you’re on a long call somewhere. You’re worse than my thirteen-year-old niece. D’you see the goddamn sky?”
“I see the goddamn sky right now,” Leith said, still lost in love. “It’s the best goddamn sky I’ve seen in a long time.”
“We’re at the Black Bear,” Giroux said. “Myself and Mike and Spacey. We’re saving a spot for you. And make it fast because we need a distraction here in a big way. It’s Mike’s last night here, so he’s pulling out all the stops, if you know what I mean. He’s telling us in great detail the dynamics of aurora borealis, which I so do not want to know.”
“Trashing the magic for you?”
“No, he couldn’t do that. It’s just really, really not interesting.”
Leith smiled. “Sorry, but I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got my own bar right here in front of me. But I do have a question for you. Did anybody manage to contact the two little bears?”
Frank and Lenny Law, he meant. Since Rob Law’s arrest, nothing had been heard of them, neither hide nor hair, and it was becoming worrisome.
“No,” Giroux said. “I’ll check with my people on the road, see what’s happening, and call you back.”
A few minutes later, she did call back, not with an update but breaking news. “Sorry, but we have to meet, like, now. Augie and Ecton just picked up Lenny. He was hitchhiking up the Old Town road. He’s got something to say, they’re telling me, but he’s not saying it. Whatever it is, doesn’t look good, Dave.”
The detachment being just across the highway from the Super 8, Leith didn’t have to drive, which would be breaking his own laws. He capped the mickey, pulled on jacket and boots, and made tracks.
* * *
The kid was a wreck. His mouth hung open. Bilious-looking, like he’d been into the liquor cabinet. Or the pharmaceuticals, maybe. And his eyes were swollen and bloodshot, sticky and heavy-lidded, like he’d been crying long and hard.
“What is it?” Leith asked him. “What happened?” He and Giroux sat with the youngest of the Law brothers in Giroux’s office, trying not to loom over him, trying to make him comfortable. So far he hadn’t said much of anything to anyone, and another minute passed, and finally he came out with it, but in a faraway voice, like someone — Leith imagined — sucked into the fourth dimension. “He’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?”
“Frank.”
“Where did he go?”
Lenny Law pointed more or less at Giroux. “Here. To see you.”
Leith questioned Giroux with his eyes. She shook her head. “He’s not here,” he told Lenny. “He hasn’t been here at all today.”
“He dropped me at home and said he was coming here, and took off. An hour ago. He wouldn’t let me go with him.”
“Why was he coming here?”
“To tell you something.”
“D’you know what he wanted to tell us?”
“What he’s done,” Lenny Law said in that airy voice that was beginning to give Leith the creeps.
He asked the boy to tell them everything he knew about what Frank had done, what exactly he had said, but the youngest brother wouldn’t say. Leith asked him where they’d been all day, him and Frank, and did they drive there? If Frank was driving and had left half an hour earlier, he should have been here many minutes ago. Had he stopped somewhere along the way? Did he say where he might be stopping?
But Lenny was done divulging. It was Frank’s thing now, and whatever Frank had to say he would have to say himself.
Giroux and Auxiliary Constable Daniels took Lenny back to his home to wait there, in case Frank changed his mind and returned. Leith stayed in the office, having instructed Constable Spacey to organize everyone on staff, on duty and off, including auxiliaries, to launch a dedicated search in the area for Frank and/or his green 1982 Jeep.
Spacey promised she’d scour the planet till she found him, no problem.
Spacey is a good cop, thought Leith, still with a mix of envy and admiration. She’ll go far.
* * *
The sad warbling of a small bird buried deep under the snow woke Dion, and he looked at the ceiling. He didn’t know which ceiling it was until the bird warbled again and he recognized the sound as his cellphone and the place as the Super 8, and he recalled he’d gotten off shift and lain down to rest and must have fallen into a deep sleep. He found the phone on the fourth ring, and Spacey’s brittle voice was in his ear, telling him to get in to work right away.
He looked at his watch. “But —”
“Now,” she said.
Across the highway he found the office fully lit, in spite of the late hour, and it looked like all were in attendance for whatever emergency this was. Spacey gave Dion and the others detailed instructions to grid-search certain areas of town for Frank Law and/or his vehicle. Dion took his copy of the bulletin and asked what was happening, and Spacey spoke in a low voice, for his ears only. “As I just finished explaining, but maybe you didn’t click, word is he was on his way in to make a confession, but he disappeared en route. So if by chance you apprehend him, don’t fuck up by having a nice little chat with him. Just shut up and bring him in and let somebody with a functioning brain get his statement. Okay?”
He worked on a mean, snappy reply, but not fast enough; she had moved on and was talking to somebody else. Dion drove out to find the area assigned to him, and it happened to be in the area to the west of the 7-Eleven mini-mall, and once within its quiet avenues and cul-de-sacs, he knew that this was the last place on earth Frank Law would be found. It was a small new subdivision with a middle-class feel to it, Hazelton’s version of urban sprawl, and he knew Spacey had done it on purpose, given him the least likely zone to search. It was all about revenge with her.
He followed about half her instructions, visually checked driveways as he passed, but didn’t stop at every closed garage or outbuilding and pester the residents about permission to search. It was cutting corners, but Frank wasn’t here, not in plain sight and not hidden either.
Having cut so many corners, he was done sooner than the time allotted to him, and he turned his vehicle back onto the highway, tires scraping on ice, and saw that the skies to the east were strangely pink and writhing, as if the world on the far side of the mountains was ablaze. He was watching the sky as he drove along and almost didn’t see the hitchhiker ahead, standing on the shoulder, a slouchy cap taming her long hair that fluttered sideways like a cape, and her thumb out. She pulled that thumb in fast when she saw the vehicle coming her way was a police cruiser, and at the same time he recognized her under the sickly orange glow of the street lamp. Evangeline Doyle, apparently on her way to a new life. He signalled, pulled over, and stepped from the car, and she gave a whoop of recognition and came forward in a weird lope, burdened by a large backpack. They stood on the shoulder, face to face, and he saw she was already road-weary, though not quite fatigued. Her pretty, round face broke into a grin. “Can you take me to Edmonton, Officer?”
“Bit late to be heading out of town. Why don’t you wait till morning?”
“Nah. I’m a night bird.”
“Still. Chances of getting a ride are slim, I think.” At least with someone safe. He tried to tell her with a stern look what he thought of it, hitchhiking at all, but especially at night. And especially here, this notorious strip from Prince Rupert to Prince George that had earned the mournful name of Highway of Tears for good reason.
She sniffed and looked at the pink sky, now tinged with gre
en. She nodded. “I suppose you’re right. It’s just Scottie’s been in a really shitty mood lately, so we got in a bit of a yelling match, and I guess I burned my bridges.But one more night I guess I can put up with him. Would you look at that, though?”
They looked at the sky together, and then he looked at Evangeline, because the brim of her cap was sparkling pink under the lamplight, which reminded him of something, but he couldn’t say what. She saw him staring at it, and said, “Problem?”
“Can I see it?” he said.
She took it off and handed it over. The cap was fake suede, with a stiff beak that was suede over card. He looked at the glitter, glued on in a deteriorating pattern along the brim. He touched the glitter and Evangeline said, “Careful, there’s not much left, and it’s an old favourite.”
He looked at her and recalled the photo of her on the wall, the girl outside on a windy day, cap on and one gloved hand keeping it from flying away. He said, “Where are the gloves?”
Because it was a matching set, and the glove in the picture was grey, a soft knit fabric, with a little sparkling bow at the wrist, and though it was significant, he couldn’t say why, or whether that significance attached to this file or something else altogether.
“Scottie lost them,” Evangeline said, making a face of exasperation, a mother wearied by her child’s pranks. “They’re those tiny gloves that stretch and fit anybody, so the idiot borrowed them. Can you imagine a man wearing gloves with little pink bows? He probably stretched them all out of shape anyway. Do you mind if I ask why?”
He returned the cap, knowing the why might come to him, eventually. Probably too late to matter.
She put it back on and said with an attractive and challenging smirk, “Wouldn’t be able to zip me over to his place, would you? It’ll take you all of five minutes.”
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